Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ukma!rutgers!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ur-valhalla!micropen!dave
From: dave@micropen (David F. Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Internet Virus: SunOS patches
Summary: what gives???
Message-ID: <580@micropen>
Date: 8 Nov 88 15:02:06 GMT
References: <76493@sun.uucp>
Organization: Micropen Dirent Writing Systems, Pittsford, NY
Lines: 23

In article <76493@sun.uucp>, chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
> The following modifications have been approved by Sun Microsystems
> Customer Support to fix the current Internet Virus problem.  This is a


Its probably in the past enough to wonder what the h&%$ SUN and other vendors
like Mt. XINU were *thinking of* when they went into the Makefiles and enabled
the known security risk of sendmail debug mode.  In this forum, (under its
previous incarnation as unix-wizards), it was a known fact that sendmail
contained a back door debug mode as wide as a football field.  I cannot 
figure out why these companies propagated this "bug" when even I was familiar 
with this "problem" from this net though I am certainly not a security or 
sendmail specialist.

It will be a long time before we have a responsible user community.  Some
vandals will always be around.  But we must have responsible vendors to
make it hard on them.

-- 
David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
micropen!dave@ee.rochester.edu

"The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll