Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!jln
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Call for Discussion: comp.sys.mac reorganization
Message-ID: <4358@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 90 05:26:45 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
Lines: 43

I understand that there's a proposal to create a new UseNet 
newsgroup devoted to Macintosh viruses.  I missed the original 
proposal on the nets, but a friend told me about it, and 
recommended that I post my comments on news.groups.

I'd like to register a "NO" vote on any such new group.  
I have several reasons for voting "NO":

1) There is a already a group comp.virus (= VIRUS-L) which 
is very active and contains lots of Mac-related postings.  
It's a moderated group, which helps a bit.

2) I and other anti-viral tool authors would undoubtably 
continue to post announcements of new viruses and upgrades 
of our tools to comp.sys.mac anyway, to reach the widest 
possible audience.

3) The most important reason of all is that I'm afraid such a 
group would only encourage speculation about how viruses work 
and how new viruses could be created.  It is the unfortunate 
truth that such speculation in public does indeed lead to the 
creation of new viruses - it's happened several times in the 
Mac world already, and numerous times in the PC world.  Those 
of us who are active in the fight against viruses have come 
to the sad conclusion that it is very dangerous to talk about 
our work except among ourselves.  I know that this is elitist 
and may even be hopeless in the long run, but that's the way 
it is.  

4) Amateurs who post uninformed conjecture about viruses 
simply confuse the public - witness the really bad mess on 
comp.sys.mac (or perhaps it was comp.sys.mac.programmer, I've 
forgotten) shortly after the discovery of WDEF.  I think that 
the creation of a new group devoted solely to viruses would 
only encourage this kind of thing.

5) The people who are actively doing research on Mac viruses
and who are developing the major anti-viral tools already
have their own private discussion group.

John Norstad (author of Disinfectant)
Northwestern University
jln@acns.nwu.edu