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Images A Virus Threat?

The latest story in the virus world seems to rock Windows OS once again. Being as user Friendly as windows has become running scripts and taking actions behind the scenes to eliminate user intervention has now once again opened a loophole for the virus world to exploit. Images on web pages of all things. The article can be found here.
https://money.cnn.com/2006/01/03/technology...dex.htm?cnn=yes
In your opinion is there any way that Microsoft can prevent security threats such as this without destroying the user friendly interface so many people have come to love?

Addition: A more detailed description of this vulnerability can be found here.


Edited: bwren on 4th Jan, 2006 - 3:26am

Threat Virus Images

I think there was a similar discussion on this some time ago with regards to software to catch it. There is a program that detects this. It is not new, it has actually been around a long time as this problem has been known for a number of years (the logo of the software is something related with a guy surfing the waves). I cannot remember the name as I do not use it much anymore, but it could detect if an image was more than it seemed and stop it. The main problem is the number of resources it took to do this was ridiculous.

Images A Virus Threat? Gaming Video & Issues Computer

Unfortunately, Windows is so common that it is a large and bright target for script kiddies and hacks to shoot at. I am not surprised that the newest virus is within images, it really does make sense. Putting a virus, say a macro, in an image is fairly easy. I can actually incorporate a macro to do anything in a picture with photoshops advanced utilities. But my email scanner and virus scanner both scan pics as well, so a virus is rarely on my system, by any means.