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From: wugate!attctc.Dallas.TX.US!hutto@uunet.UU.NET (Jon Hutto)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: Sophisticated Viruses
Message-ID: <0002.8911201547.AA05782@ge.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 21:51:32 GMT
Sender: Virus Discussion List <VIRUS-L@IBM1.CC.Lehigh.EDU>
Lines: 29
Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

In article <0009.8911161700.AA03975@ge.sei.cmu.edu> ttidca.TTI.COM!hollombe%sdc
svax@ucsd.edu (The Polymath) writes:
>krvw@SEI.CMU.EDU (Kenneth R. van Wyk) writes:
>}There's an important distinction to be made here - detection during
>}propagation vs. detection after (presumably) successful propagation.
>}A virus could well attempt to conceal its existence while propagating,
>}and then do quite the opposite (!) during a destructive phase.  No one
>     An unfriendly government wants to cause dislocation in the United
>     States.  It commissions a difficult to detect virus that spends 5
>     years propagating, then wipes the hard disks of every machine it's
>     on, without warning or explanation.

This is scary. A Virus writen by someone who knows what they are doing
coulsd be very dangerous. Or even one by someone who knows more than
viruse writers at any rate.

One writen by a non-friendly government would be especaly bad. Forget
the cold war, this is the Technical war, between Super computers. We,
the users would really be caught between a rock and a hard place.
Nothing we could do, but watch them destroy each other.

Could you imagine someone who knows IBM-PC ASM well, like Peter
Norton, or McAfee writing a virus? (completly hypathetical, no hidden
meaning) It would be the worst virus to hit ANYONE.

  Jon Hutto     PC-Tech BBS  (214)271-8899     2400 baud

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