Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uoft02!grx1042
From: grx1042@uoft02.utoledo.edu (Steve Snodgrass)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Self Extracting Archives
Message-ID: <104.25fdcdd4@uoft02.utoledo.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 90 09:51:32 GMT
References: <55.25f441b5@uoft02.utoledo.edu> <195@sai.UUCP> <2675@leah.Albany.Edu> <79.25f87ef0@uoft02.utoledo.edu> <10102@cbmvax.commodore.com> <90.25fc5fd6@uoft02.utoledo.edu> <492d7755.1a5bf@moth.engin.umich.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: SUBTEC
Lines: 27

In article <492d7755.1a5bf@moth.engin.umich.edu>, chrisl@caen.engin.umich.edu (Chris Lang) writes:
> 
> Anyone who was going to go to the trouble of distributing malicious code under
> the guise of a self-extracting archive could very easily create fake code to
> mimic a file listing, no?  Or even use a real archive and just change the
> executable code, so it would look, for all intents and purposes, exactly
> like a real archive.

Anyone who goes to *THAT* much trouble could just as easily create an
executable file that looked completely innocuous and put it in a zoo archive.
The point here is that any argument applied against a self-extracting archive
can also be applied against an executable inside a zoo file.

> (Sounds a little paranoid, I suppose, but there are a lot of creeps out
> there...for proof, take a look through the VirusX docs.  Those babies didn't
> write themselves.)

I'm not debating the existence of trojans/viruses.  However, it's silly to
label self-extracting archives as inherently more dangerous than any other
archive you might come across.

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