Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken!decwrl!shlump.nac.dec.com!hannah.enet.dec.com!batcheldern From: batcheldern@hannah.enet.dec.com (Ned Batchelder) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: Postscript Viruses Message-ID: <7752@shlump.nac.dec.com> Date: 24 Jan 90 21:29:46 GMT References: <21772@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1990Jan14.180821.18711@trigraph.uucp> Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com Reply-To: batcheldern@hannah.enet.dec.com Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 12 This is an extremely serious concern for security-concious installations: how do they know that a bogus Helvetica hasn't been loaded into their printer which works fine, except when asked to print (Top Secret), in which case it prints (Unclassified)? Can any PostScript expert out there guarantee that their Helvetica is correct? Damage to disks is a possibility, and would be the act of a spiteful hacker; damage to printed output is a very real reason why someone might want to write a PostScript trojan horse in order to steal information. Ned Batchelder, Digital Equipment Corp., BatchelderN@Hannah.enet.DEC.com