Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!pwcmrd!skipnyc!atpal!tneff
From: tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: FLUSHOT+ Bug
Message-ID: <129@atpal.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 88 18:28:50 GMT
References: <8855@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: Rational Technologies, Inc.
Lines: 24
Keywords: flushot, virus, trojan horse
Summary: Limitation, not bug

In article <8855@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu () writes:
>
>  I have found a bug in FLUSHOT+ which may be a fairly serious limitation
>with the software...
> ... 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.

Yup, this is a limitation on FLUSHOT.  *NOT* a bug.  (It would be a bug
if FLUSHOT claimed to handle XTree and other Norton-type utilities, which
it doesn't.)

I'm sure the FLUSHOT author is acutely aware that if you don't use the
DOS file-handling services to manipulate COMMAND.COM and other protected
files, he doesn't catch you.  After all, he wrote the code.  So yes, a
trojan/virus could be written that circumvents FLUSHOT.  That's one reason
you should back up your system regularly and not run unexamined software
you get from others, rather than relying on "vaccines" and other such
nostrums.

-- 
Tom Neff			UUCP: ...uunet!pwcmrd!skipnyc!atpal!tneff
	"None of your toys	CIS: 76556,2536		MCI: TNEFF
	 will function..."	GEnie: TOMNEFF		BIX: are you kidding?