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From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.misc
Subject: Re: A survey: forwarded by request
Message-ID: <5473@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 88 05:10:44 GMT
References: <5449@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU
Reply-To: rbmckinn@cc.utah.edu
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
Lines: 61


    ADDENDUM TO OUR VIRUS SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
	Due to time constraints, and our own oversight, our
survey was posted with several weaknesses.  We hope to
correct some of these here, though some are beyond repair
at this late date.

1.  The use of the term "virus".  Where we refer to virus
    in the survey, we were using it in the generic fashion
    used by many of the newspapers and TV news reporters
    in the past weeks.  We were aware of their being a 
    distinction between "worm" and "virus", but were not
    sufficiently informed to spot and correct our misuse
    of the term before the survey was put on-line.  We are
    grateful to Eugene Spafford, and others, for providing
    us with authoritative definitions on these, and have
    taken steps to insure that we and others we can influence will
    use the terms properly.

2.  Some of our questions contained essentially two questions or 
    thoughts, though we treated them as one.  This prompted
    several to not answer these questions, or to answer both
    thoughts separately.  We regret the ambiguity and distortion
    that these questions cause, and we only hope that in our
    final report on the results we can make some clarifying
    statement that will make the responses we received worth
    the effort the respondents put into them.

3.  Finally, and most importantly, we regret that the wording
    of our survey seemed to imply that the Cornell University
    student reported by the news (both TV and newspapers) as
    having initiated the recent "worm" was in fact the real
    and guilty person who did this.  We did not intend to say
    we think this student is guilty.  And we would like him, if
    he ever reads this, to know that we hope he can be cleared
    of the deed, if he is innocent.  We do believe in the 
    principle of "innocent until proven guilty", and we regret
    having implicated him in the careless wording of our survey.
    Please read in the word "allegedly" whereever appropriate in
    the survey, as we certainly wish we had included it.

4.  One more thing, the survey and its contents are the sole
    creation of the four man team listed at the bottom of
    the survey.  We four alone, and particularly myself, are 
    the only ones who should be considered responsible for
    the flaws contained therein.  Any statements in the
    survey, or implied meanings, should not be taken to be
    the opinion of the University of Utah, or any department,
    or employee of the University of Utah.

			We regret any annoyance our errors
                     may have caused.  

			Robert McKinnon, in behalf of the
                    sponsors of the recently posted
                    Virus Survey Questionnaire.
-- 
Gene Spafford
NSF/Purdue/U of Florida  Software Engineering Research Center,
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu	uucp:	...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf