Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!gatech!ncsuvx!ncsugn!emigh
From: emigh@ncsugn.ncsu.edu (Ted H. Emigh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: WARNING on FILETEST suite WARNING WARNING
Message-ID: <3558@ncsugn.ncsu.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 88 15:50:32 GMT
References: <225@unsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: emigh@ncsugn.UUCP (Ted H. Emigh)
Organization: Genetics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
Lines: 37

In article <225@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes:

>     I have FluShot3 installed on my XT-compatible (from AUTOEXEC.BAT).
>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.  According to the Docs, it is a 
>modified version of FILECRC by Ted Emigh.  The modifications, again, 
>according to documentation, were made by Len Levine.  On running
>FILEREAD.COM, FluShot3 sent a message that a "write to COMMAND.COM"
>was being performed.  
>     Since I am under the impression that COMMAND.COM should NEVER
>be written to, I am posting this warning.  I am NOT stating that 
>the program is a Trojan, only that I got the above error message.
>Under the assumption that you would rather be over-cautious, I have
>posted immediately.

I have not tried FILETEST.  However, I am the original author of FILECRC.
I have never used FluShot3, so I do not know what it looks for in detecting
viruses.  In particular, I do not know what it means by "write to COMMAND.COM".

Due to a bug in TURBO Pascal 3.0, a file that is R/O cannot be read.  I
had to change the file attributes in order to read in the file.  It is
possible that is the problem.  It also could be possible that TURBO Pascal
does something weird with files even if only reading them.  I have NEVER
seen files change due to a read operation with TURBO Pascal, but I
suppose that is possible.

Of course, you are always better off recompiling the programs from source.
I can vouch for the sources for FILECRC as *I* distributed them.  But, of
course, I cannot possibly know whether any changes others introduce will
be benign.


-- 
Ted H. Emigh, Dept. Genetics and Statistics, NCSU, Raleigh, NC
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