Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!uudell!natinst!rpp386!woody
From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Postscript Viruses
Summary: virus
Keywords: PostScript Viruses Trojan Horses
Message-ID: <17731@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 23 Jan 90 12:55:19 GMT
References: <21772@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1990Jan14.180821.18711@trigraph.uucp> <1487@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM>
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Plano, TX
Lines: 26

> 
> I disagree!  My hard disk contains downloaded fonts plus the font
> cache.  I have backups for my fonts, and loss of the font cache

I assume that this means that you have downloaded the fonts from another 
machine.  If you bought the $9000 Adobe disk loaded up with fonts, the only
way I can see that you could have a backup would be to take the fonts off
the disk.  If you can take the fonts off the disk (upload them) then a 
virus could infect via the same mechanism...
 

> would not be catastrophic.  The WORST thing that a virus or trojan
> horse could do would be to change the serverdict password!
> 
In a network enviornment, it most certainly would be bad.  However, the
same code that changed the password, would be able to correct it.  consider:
if you want to change the password you must know it.  There is a routine
running around that will reset the system password back to 0 regardless.
It is written in 68000 ml, and is specific to 68000.  As I see it, it would
have to be used to corrupt the password, if the password was unknown.
Thus, the same bit of nasty code could be used to un do it.  However, for
non 68000 machines, it would indeed be nasty.

 
Cheers
woody