Xref: utzoo comp.misc:2169 comp.sys.ibm.pc:13742
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!bloom-beacon!gatech!ncar!oddjob!gargoyle!att-ih!chinet!dag
From: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Commercial liability for distributing a virus
Message-ID: <4123@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 88 22:42:14 GMT
References: <500@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <4811@ecsvax.UUCP> <622@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Reply-To: dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 48

In article <622@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu.UUCP (Russ Nelson) writes:
+In article <4811@ecsvax.UUCP> kotlas@ecsvax.UUCP (Carolyn M. Kotlas) writes:
++In article <500@xios.XIOS.UUCP>, dont@xios.XIOS.UUCP (Don Taylor) writes:> 
+++ [I did ] a 'strings' on MS Word (version 2 I think) and I saw a chilling
+++ message that said something to the effect: 'the fruits of evil are bitter,
+++ wiping your hard disk now...'.
++This isn't the only instance of little messages being sprinkled in
++Microsoft products.
+
+I saw a message that went approximately like this in a Microsoft program
+that I disassembled.  The message would appear if you invoked the program
+with an (undocumented) /M switch.  Unfortunately, I cannot locate the
+program again.  Maybe it was the mouse driver, maybe it was recover.
+Chris Peters worked on the new dos.  Microsoft rules ok!

Back when I worked as a basic programmer for OSI (Ohio Scientific Instruments)
there was what we called a 'germ' in the PROMs for the Challenger 2P.
This particular 'germ' would, apparently randomly, hang up the system with
some cute message.  I don't remember what the message was, but BOY was it
annoying.  I don't know if this germ was in the ROMs that got shipped to
customers.  (OSI used MS 8 K basic!)

I remember hearing about a secret screen hidden in some version of MAC
or Lisa ROMs, that was there as an easy way for the insiders to tell if
someone had cloned their ROMs.

These are not viruses any more than the messages in expensive software
packages as they do not self propogate.  With the exception of the problem
on the OSI C2P's, none are destructive.

The most virus-like thing I've ever heard of acutally built into a
'commercial' software release is the login/cc hack in which cc would
recognize that it was compiling login and include code that would
allow the author to log in (as root, I believe) on the system without
the root password, and would recognize that it was compiling a new
version of cc, and insert the code to recognize itself and login, so
the sources to cc and login did not contain the security holes, just
the binaries.  This was done, so the story goes, as a demonstration
by the author of the hack (was it dmr, kt or bk?) of how easy it was
to get around the security in UNIX, and not intended to be distributed,
but a few unix tapes were shipped with compilers infected with the
virus.  The entire story may be apocriphal, but I heard it from a
good source.

-- 
		Daniel A. Glasser	dag@chinet.UUCP
    One of those things that goes "BUMP!!! (ouch!)" in the night.
 ...!att-ih!chinet!dag | ...!ihnp4!mwc!dag | ...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag