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From: herbw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Herb Weiner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Postscript Viruses
Summary: SERIOUS damage IS possible!
Keywords: PostScript Viruses Trojan Horses
Message-ID: <1487@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM>
Date: 22 Jan 90 20:06:23 GMT
References: <21772@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1990Jan14.180821.18711@trigraph.uucp> <1990Jan16.154513.10892@intercon.com> <17677@rpp386.cactus.org> <51011@bbn.COM> <137@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <139@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz>
Sender: nobody@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM
Reply-To: herbw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Herb Weiner)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 17

In Article <21772@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ
(Ian Farquhar) writes:
 
> 2.  To really do damage, it would have to access the undocumented
>     contents of the internal dictionary, or access the hardware
>     directly.  Both are non-standard, would need a great amount
>     of code and intimate knowledge of internal details to do this
>     trick.  Woody mentioned scrambling the file system, which he
>     said is not difficult.  This is about all that I can think a
>     virus/trojan could do.

I disagree!  My hard disk contains downloaded fonts plus the font
cache.  I have backups for my fonts, and loss of the font cache
would not be catastrophic.  The WORST thing that a virus or trojan
horse could do would be to change the serverdict password!

Herb Weiner (herbw@midas.WR.TEK.COM)