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From: jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Heatseeker & Viruses
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.070520.23908@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Jun 91 07:05:20 GMT
References: <910624033812.116808@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL>
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Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
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TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes:

>I do apologize if anyone, especially Mr.  Curtis, was offended or
>insulted by my comments questioning the wisdom of accepting software of
>unknown provenance.  (At the risk of offending a whole nationality some
>scholarly reference to Greeks bearing gifts would be a propos.)  But I
>meant them seriously and none of the few comments I've received change
>the situation much.  Jeff claims he is well-known to this list -- that
>has to be somewhat of an exaggeration in that in the last month there
>have been 1,396 messages posted to it, of which only 8 came from him;
>needless to say I would assume most poeple do not read all the traffic
>and I certainly didn't associate the Heatseeker announcement with
>anything I'd read before.  (I have a GS and don't have Copy II+ so I
>wasn't at all interested in any the messages on that subject.)  I have
>no reason to doubt that he is an upstanding person with no malicious
>intent, but on the other hand I have little solid evidence that he is
>who he says he is.  (I'm sure you all remember the kremvax hoax of
>several years ago -- one cannot necessarily believe the headers on an
>e-mail message.)

>In this one case I will grant that I am probably over-reacting -- I'm
>pretty sure that if I called Argonne Labs they'd verify they did indeed
>have a Jeffrey Curtis working for them, at the phone numbers he gave,
>and if I called him I'd find a somewhat justifiably upset person on the
>other end who was writing a whizbang Apple II utility he calls
>Heatseeker.  But that doesn't really remove all doubts.  The real
>question is how cottage-industry software can be developed and
>distributed safely so we don't have to continually have this kind of
>discussion and so people can use the talents of such people without any
>nagging doubts.  (I'm sure you all are aware that most large companies
>and government agencies have regulations prohibiting the use of
>freeware, shareware, or the like:  if it doesn't come from IBM,
>Microsoft, Apple or some similar large publisher, forget it.)
 ^^^^^^^

  Microsoft (perhaps not, but it was a MAJOR software corp) unwittingly
distributed commercial software with a virus.  Even the big names are not
immune to the virus 'epidemic' that has swept the mainstream PC world.

  But the real issue here is this:  who the hell cares enough to write a
virus for the Apple II world?  The people who care about the machine enough
to still program it sure aren't going to waste their time writing a virus.
Your paranoia is not only an insult to Mr. Curtis, it's an affront to Apple II
programmers everywhere.  There is no place for attitudes like yours,
considering the situation the Apple II is in- most useful software written
for IIs these days is written by a core of hobbyists, most of whom expect 
nothing in return for their work.
  Put another way, anyone with the technical knowledge necessary to write
a GS/OS virus will also know that there is much more important work to be
done.
  As an aside, there are (in my knowledge) two documented viruses for the 
Apple II.  Yeah, that's *2*.  One was years ago, and worked
only on stock DOS 3.3 (evidently this was the first virus in the micro world,
if not the first virus anywhere).  The newer one was Lode Runner, which 
judging by it's name, was also in the time frame of DOS 3.3.  The Apple II
world in general has escaped the rash of teenagers with their IBMs.
  Also, the computer virus paranoia has spread beyond the computer world-
the Weekly World News (yes, I know it's a pulp 'zine, just bear with me)
recently published an article entitled "Man catches computer virus". What's
frightening is that people will believe this crap!  In a world where computers
are misrepresented constantly in the media and entertainment industries,
(just watch TV and you'll see impossible things done daily), there is no 
room for anything but FACTS.  And the facts are as I have stated above.

--
Jawaid Bazyar               |  "Twenty seven faces- with their eyes turned to
Graduated!/Comp Engineering |    the sky. I have got a camera, and an airtight
bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu          |     alibi.."
   Apple II Forever!        |  I need a job... Be privileged to pay me! :-)