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From: larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm,net.news.sa,net.sources.d
Subject: Beware of Blindly Un-SHARing a File
Message-ID: <947@kitty.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Apr-86 01:10:50 EST
Article-I.D.: kitty.947
Posted: Wed Apr  9 01:10:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Apr-86 01:42:06 EST
Organization: Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, NY
Lines: 32
Keywords: ``Relink'' April Fool
Xref: linus net.news.adm:564 net.news.sa:246 net.sources.d:78


	Recently an article <2407@prls.UUCP> purporting to be source for a
program to ``relink'' a deleted (!) file was posted to the net as an April
Fool's joke.
	Part of the joke was funny, and part of it was not so funny.  Anyone
naive enough to believe that a deleted file could be recovered was well fooled
by the introductory remarks and the phony manual page.  The voluminous amount
of C source also gave some "credence" to the joke.  This was the funny part.
	The not-so-funny part was that the poster of the article didn't stop
at the above, but decided to play some file manipulation games.  While the
shar source would not destroy anything, this was a nasty thing to do, and the
poster showed decided lack of good taste.
	There is a valuable lesson to be learned here: NEVER, EVER blindly
unshar ANYTHING unknown!  After all, the shar source COULD have contained
something like ``rm -fr''.  That would not at all be funny.  The recent
discussions here concerning article forgery certainly illustrate how such
a shar Trojan Horse could be planted "anonymously".
	I have utilized many source postings from the Net in shar format,
but have ALWAYS examined the ENTIRE shar file for ``funny business'' using
an editor before executing it.  This really doesn't take very long to do,
since the file has to be edited to strip the header anyhow.
	I wish I had a dollar for everyone on the Net who were "fooled" by
this posting, although damn few people will admit it.  In case anyone was
wondering, I was not fooled, since I learned The Hard Way a long time ago
that "rm Means Forever"...

==>  Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York
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