dmg@retina.mitre.org (David Gursky) (09/26/89)
I've just spent the past three hours reading and re-reading various forms of hype about the alleged upcoming attack on October 13 of the Datacrime virus. I would like to make a couple comments about this. First and foremost, there is no doubt in my mind (nor has there ever been any doubt in my mind), that Datacrime is a real virus, causes real problems, and will next strike on October 13 (it is, after-all, a "time-bomb" virus, that activates on specific dates, in this case, Friday the 13ths). I have real doubts however that this virus has made any inroads into the United States beyond the 10 cases John McAfee has cited previously. I suppose it is a good thing that the NoCrime application has been updated to detect a new strain of DataCrime, and that all sorts of other PC-based applications have been updated to detect DataCrime, (as an aside, the people who make "Quarantine" for the MS-DOS called me today to let me know they are sending me a demo copy of their application to beat on, and they made a point to let me know it detects DataCrime!), *however*, all of this does not an epidemic make! Sure people are updating their applications to fight Datacrime; Datacrime is a known virus that uses established infection techniques! It's not that hard (I would imagine) to make the changes to the applications to fight Datacrime. When it all comes down to it, if the desktop computers of the United States were under attack right now by Datacrime (or any of dozens of other viruses), we would be seeing signs of it, and Virus-L would be full of reports of infections. No infections, no virus. Now can everyone please calm down? The sky is not falling. Disclaimer: Dis is soup. Dis is art. Soup. Art. [Apologies to L. Tomlin.] David Gursky Member of the Technical Staff, W-143 Special Projects Department The MITRE Corporation
David.M..Chess.CHESS@YKTVMV (09/26/89)
> (it is, after-all, a "time-bomb" virus, that activates on specific > dates, in this case, Friday the 13ths). No, no! The DataCrime viruses activate whenever the date is October 13th -or later-; no Friday-check. (Sorry to pick on you, but people keep getting this wrong! Other points are well taken.) DC