Another piece of technology promised for Longhorn (now Windows Vista) has bit the dust. Monad, or MSH, joins the ranks of such other technologies as WinFS in that it has been pulled from Vista and shelved until a later time. However, it appears that there are legitimate reasons for this, since it has been feared that a virus writer had created the first "Vista viruses" by targeting MSH.
MSH was originally scheduled to be ship with Windows Vista but it is now more likely that MSH's first public release will be as part of the next edition of Microsoft Exchange, due sometime in the second half of 2006. "Monad will not be included in the final version of Windows Vista," said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in a posting to Microsoft's Security Response Centre's blog. "Monad is being considered for the Windows Operating system platform for the next three to five years. So these potential viruses do not affect Windows Vista or any other version of Windows if 'Monad' has not been installed on the system."
"The viruses do not attempt to exploit a software vulnerability and do not encompass a new method of attack," he added.
The move would seemingly follow the disclosure of five proof of concept viruses, called Danom. These infect other Monad scripts, although there is also a cross infector for .MSH, .BAT and .CMD files.