Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: woody@rpp386.cactus.org (Woodrow Baker) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Virus Trends (and FAXes on PCs) Message-ID: <0013.9001081228.AA09399@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 7 Jan 90 03:38:01 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 24 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu Nagle@cup.portal.com says: > - A FAX message is a bitstream interpreted by an interpreter at > the receving end. Could it be induced to do something interesting > through the use of illegal bit patterns? Now that hard disks are available on Postscript printers, We have another problem.. It is concievable to embed a virus, or a trojan in a font. If the font were encrypted, it would be mighty hard to hunt the virus down. It could convievably alter fonts on the hard disk, screw up font chache images, and or plain crash the hard disk. It would, however be difficult for it to infect other systems, unless one retrieves a contaminated file and sends it to another laser printer. The potential for abuse also exists in prolouges. I have not seen or heard of one yet, but now is the time to give some thought to how to prevent them BEFORE they start getting out of hand. Cheers Woody p.s. Some of the new VIDEO cypherrs are viruses of a sort. They play with the signal to screw-up VCR's. Messing with the Automatic Gain control among other things. If some one manages to overcome them, and make a copy of the tape, the messed up signal could sort of take on viral properties, though they would not do any damage.