Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:12479 news.sysadmin:1519
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!jack
From: jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: The Internet Virus--Another issue
Message-ID: <7715@boring.cwi.nl>
Date: 16 Nov 88 13:39:43 GMT
References: <1460@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu. <236@bigbroth.UUCP. <5365@medusa.cs.purdue.edu. <654@optilink.UUCP>
Sender: news@cwi.nl
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 20

I think there's another side to the internet virus story that
hasn't been mentioned yet: what do the manufacturers do.

When a serious defect in a car is found the manufacturer usually calls
all cars with the defect back and repairs them for free.

So far, only Sun has done something similar by posting instructions
on patching sendmail and a replacement for fingerd to the net (and,
I assume that they'll also snail-mail it to the poor customers
without net access). Applause, but where are the others?

Even though only vaxen and suns have been affected by this virus, it
is trivial now to write a virus that will also exploit the bug on
any other system.

Yet another issue, of course, is why sun compiled the distribution sendmail
with the WIZ option in the first place.
--
Fight war, not wars			| Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl
Destroy power, not people! -- Crass	| (or mcvax!jack)