Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!ames!pasteur!agate!web7f.berkeley.edu!laba-5ac
From: laba-5ac@web7f.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: FLUSHOT+ Bug
Message-ID: <8855@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 18 Apr 88 01:45:25 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu ()
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 19
Keywords: flushot, virus, trojan horse


  I have found a bug in FLUSHOT+ which may be a fairly serious limitation
with the software.  After installing it and setting the P=c:command.com
to stop writing to my command.com files, I decided to try it out.  I did
an erase command.com from DOS and it worked.  I was fairly impressed (this
is the first of the FLUSHOT programs I have tried to run).  Then, I loaded
XTree Professional and deleted the file.  No complaint from FLUSHOT.  From
XTree, you can delete any file on your hard drive, even if it is protected
by FLUSHOT, and FLUSHOT won't even tell you about it.  It seems like a virus
could be then be written that could wipe out all the files on your hard
drive by erasing them in the same way that Xtree does.  I don't know how to
contact the author of FLUSHOT directly without calling his BBS, so I'm
posting this message in the hope that he will eventually receive it.


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Erik Talvola          laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu

"I don't impress easy." -- Jesse "The Body" Ventura
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