Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: DMOYNIHA@WAYNEST1.BITNET (Dennis P. Moynihan) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Missouri Virus (PC) Message-ID: <0002.8908011131.AA28024@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 31 Jul 89 13:33:43 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 49 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu John MacAfee writes: "There has been some confusion about the Bantam Book's "Dos Power Tools" diskettes, and the recent Wayne State newsletter advising purchasers of the book not to use the diskettes has obviously concerned the editors at Bantam - and the warning is unwarranted...." Well, first off I'm glad that the diskette doesn't contain a virus--it's bad enough worrying about shared diskettes without having to worry about shrinkwrap stuff, too. I think, at the time, there was ample reason to be cautious about this product. The original posting was quite strong for a virus warning: "The occurrence was at the National Security Administration. The virus came into their shop on a disk shipped with the book - "DOS Power Tools", published by Bantam. This was the third report of the virus entering an installation on this book....". While John points out in his recent posting that Mr. Dimsdale 'believed' the infection came from the book and that two other organizations also suspected a 'possibility' of the disk being infected, these qualifiers are not to be found in the initial posting. We're in a situation here where we're not going to personally debug every new virus. We have to rely on the qualified and dedicated people who are already doing so. Virus-L is about the best forum for monitoring such activity. We're careful to take a report with weight the authors give it--when someone says "we're not sure yet" or "we believe", then we let them resolve that doubt before taking any action. I guess there is a two way lesson here. Readers of Virus-L have to be careful when evaluating a new report, and look for independent confirmation of reports before acting on them. However, I think this points out the need for utter clarity when offering a virus report to the list. People will act on them and there's no way of telling where something will end (sites will pass info on to others, the report may end up in a publication somewhere, etc.). For the record, I think everyone does take a tremendous amount of care with their reports and information, and the dedication of the group here is really amazing. And of course, the Hombase people are at the top of that heap. We'll our campus know that DOS power tools looks like a good buy after all. - -------------------------------------- Dennis Moynihan (DMOYNIHA@WAYNEST1) Computing and Information Technology Wayne State University Detroit, MI