In yet another security alert this week,  a way has been discovered to include malicious code inside Microsoft Outlook e-mails, making it even easier - if you can believe that - for nasty ol’ hackers to take control of other people’s computers. Midweek, the SANS group issued a message describing a vulnerability which it said was ‘probably the most dangerous programming error in Windows (all varieties &√Ǭ£45;- 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0) that Microsoft has made.’ The error means that, if you use Windows and Outlook, that you’re  vulnerable to total compromise simply by previewing or reading an email, and that’s without opening any attachments marked ‘I love you big boy.’  ‘Clearly this is a serious vulnerability,’ said Scott Culp, Microsoft’s security program manager. He said the company will soon make available software that users can download to fix the problem. In the meantime, Microsoft was preparing a security bulletin to post on the Internet. The researchers say that it’s possible to conceal code in an e-mail’s time and date stamp through the ‘buffer overflow’ - extra letters and numbers that trigger an error in the computer. After those letters and numbers, the hacker can include software code that the computer will recognize as legitimate instructions as if they were typed by the victim. ‘From there,’ said Russ Cooper, security expert and editor of the online mailing list NTBugTraq, ‘I could do anything that I would normally be able to do on my computer. There are no limitations on what a hacker could do.’ Microsoft says the problem component is actually in Internet Explorer, and suggests that users upgrade to Internet Explorer version 5.01 Service Pack 1, which can be found free on Microsoft’s Web site. That version, they say is not vulnerable to this problem. SANS, meanwhile, are listing all available patches. Go get yourself fixed up. www.sans.org/newlook/resources/win_flaw.htm