Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen
From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Viruses on FTP sites??
Message-ID: <3665@sixhub.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 91 00:28:45 GMT
References: <12702.28012bda@amherst.bitnet>
Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY
Lines: 39

In article <12702.28012bda@amherst.bitnet> pshamlen@amherst.bitnet writes:

| What protection, if any, do the FTP sites provide against programs containing 
| viruses?  Some bulletin board operators check each program uploaded for common
| viruses, but this usually takes a fair amount of time.

  The only protection an ftp site has is diligence by the
administration. That goes for a news group or BBS. You bet your favorite
body part that it takes time. I believe that simtel20, garbo, and grape
check submissions in their regular areas, I don't know their current
policy on the upload area.

  I don't specify which checkers and methods I use, but there are three
checkers run before the program is reviewed, and two detectors running
while programs are tested. I believe that the last time I talked to
Keith that he was not about to specify what he used either. I don't
speak for anyone else, so that should be taken as my understanding and
not a statement of policy.

  I will add that I don't trust what I download from *anywhere*, for
technical reasons. There is always a gap between the time a virus hits
the streets and the time the checkers and fixers catch up. I certainly
don't have the time or CPU to go back and recheck all the stuff I have
which might have been infected, and I bet no one else does either.
Therefore you are only assurred that *at the time I posted* I tried like
hell to find a problem, but I'm not going back and looking at stuff
which is already out.

  Actually I should start calling the backlog a feature instead of a
problem, and say I do it to give the virus checkers a chance to catch
up. That's the ticket...

  I'm forcing some new antivirals into the queue tonight, which is why
I'm home instead of out at a meeting. These are the latest I have.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me