Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!decvax!ima!cfisun!lakart!dg
From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Standard for file transmission
Message-ID: <100@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 9 May 88 16:36:50 GMT
References: <4521@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Lake - The systems people
Lines: 34

From article <4521@hoptoad.uucp>, by gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore):
> Has the first virus been transmitted by Usenet yet?  Just think, 8100
> readers of comp.binaries.ibm.pc will all be infected at once!

This is a very valid objection to the transmission of binaries on the
net. I once figured out a virus to infect CP/M, and I know it can be
ported to MS-DOS: the real beauty of it was that it would not only
eat hard disks, but floppies as well (My plan was to install it in
a software package that I was thinking of selling, to discourage illegal
copies).

As it resided in a little under 1/2 K of binary, it was very inoccuous,
until it showed. But when it did .... ALL data, directory and system tracks
on a disk just vanished, and the way I did it, not even the Norton utilities
(or the CP/M equivalent) could bring back the files.

Mercifully I have never put this out, but as John Gilmore says, the notion of
such a beast running round on usenet gives me the screaming horrors.

I hear objections to use of C for posting source, but I have never found it
a problem: I regularly take small & medium sized C sources from UNIX, and
port them to my CP/M machine at home. It's not that difficult to do: of course
it's going to object if I try to port hack :-) :-), but ONLY for size reasons:
I can get each of the separate source files to compile, I just can't link them.

So lets see more source, and leave the binaries for those poor trusting souls
that don't know about the real world. Call me a cynic, but after some of
the warnings I've seen on a local BBS, sooner or later the axe is going
to fall.
-- 
	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
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