Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!sld
From: sld@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Steven Louis Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: WARNING on FILETEST suite WARNING WARNING
Keywords: chicken little
Message-ID: <14086@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Date: 3 Apr 88 21:23:25 GMT
References: <225@unsvax.UUCP> <1069@maynard.BSW.COM>
Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU
Reply-To: sld@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Steven Louis Davis)
Organization: UF CIS Department
Lines: 29

In article <1069@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
:In article <225@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes:
:<>I recently downloaded from comp.binaries.ibm.pc a set of programs
:<>in Turbo Pascal 3.0 (Source and Executables and Docs) called 
:<>FILETEST.ARC in PKARC format.  ...  On running
:<>FILEREAD.COM, FluShot3 sent a message that a "write to COMMAND.COM"
:<>was being performed.  
:
:Give me a break!  You said you had the SOURCES to this program!!  Are your
:eyes broken?  Before wasting net bandwidth and perhaps needlessly alarming
:hundreds of people, why don't you just take a look at the source and see
:if there's a legitimate reason for what it's doing?  And how about compiling
:the source and comparing the result to the binaries that came with it?

It would be a shame to let a reasonable warning go because of a policy of
not posting unless you were SURE that there was a problem.
Many people detecting possible virus's might not want to go throutg the
trouble of satisfying your mandate to "not waste network bandwidth unless
you're sure", and then the virus is free to do its work.

I thank the original poster for the warning.



--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steven L. Davis
sld@beach.cis.ufl.edu
..!ihnp4!codas!ufcsv!beach.ufl.cis.edu!sld