narod@lsrhs.UUCP (Joel Narod) (06/21/88)
The following copy-protection incident recently happened to my
brother. He has a legitimately licensed copy of Microsoft Access (a
telecommunications program) installed on his hard disk. A few weeks
ago the hard disk failed and, after being repaired, was returned
to him reformatted, requiring reloading of all of his files,
including Access. (He knows that reloading copy-protected programs
is risky, but he didn't remember that Access was one, nor is it
obvious what the correct re-installation procedure would have been).
The next time he ran Access, late last week, the following message
appeared:
***INTERNAL SECURITY VIOLATION***
The tree of evil bears bitter fruit,
crime does not pay.
THE SHADOW KNOWS
Trashing program disk.
He shut down his computer immediately and indefinitely, pending a
call to Microsoft to complain and ask for assistance in verifying
that his disk had not been damaged or infected by a virus, or his
data corrupted. Meanwhile, he and I confirmed the existence of the
above message-text in ACCESS.COM, using Norton's TEXT SEARCH
program. When he called Microsoft this week, they admitted that
they knew about the message from prior complaints, but claimed that
it had been put there without official sanction and that it was
harmless. They tried to assure him that the program could not carry
out its threat, and that it would probably even function properly,
if he would attempt to use it (he was not impressed). They also
offered, since he was complaining, to send him a non-copy protected
version of the program.
Neither of us claims to know the truth about the program's threat or
Microsoft's assurances. We do feel that, once the threatening
messages were discovered, a spontaneous update to all registered
users would have been in order. Microsoft, apparently, did not.
I am not recommending or condemning this product or its maker, but I
feel that this information is important to legitimate users of this
and other Microsoft products and any other copy protected products.
Please feel free to pass this on to whomever might benefit by it.
-Jeff Stone-
everett@hpcvlx.UUCP (06/22/88)
I know this was upsetting to you, but it's an old story (makes it no less important, you understand). I first read about it at least two years ago (I think). This is an example of how vulnerable companies are to their employees. Yes, it would have been nice if Microsoft had sent out a notice to all registered users, explaining the situation, but we all know that Microsoft is far from the 'perfect' company; they're also far from the worst. Everett Kaser !hplabs!hp-pcd!everett