DMOYNIHA@WAYNEST1.BITNET (Dennis P. Moynihan) (07/31/89)
John MacAfee writes:
"There has been some confusion about the Bantam Book's "Dos Power Tools"
diskettes, and the recent Wayne State newsletter advising purchasers
of the book not to use the diskettes has obviously concerned the
editors at Bantam - and the warning is unwarranted...."
Well, first off I'm glad that the diskette doesn't contain a virus--it's
bad enough worrying about shared diskettes without having to worry about
shrinkwrap stuff, too. I think, at the time, there was ample reason to
be cautious about this product. The original posting was quite strong for
a virus warning:
"The occurrence was at the National Security Administration. The virus
came into their shop on a disk shipped with the book - "DOS Power Tools",
published by Bantam. This was the third report of the virus entering
an installation on this book....".
While John points out in his recent posting that Mr. Dimsdale
'believed' the infection came from the book and that two other
organizations also suspected a 'possibility' of the disk being
infected, these qualifiers are not to be found in the initial posting.
We're in a situation here where we're not going to personally debug
every new virus. We have to rely on the qualified and dedicated people
who are already doing so. Virus-L is about the best forum for monitoring
such activity. We're careful to take a report with weight the authors
give it--when someone says "we're not sure yet" or "we believe", then we
let them resolve that doubt before taking any action.
I guess there is a two way lesson here. Readers of Virus-L have to be careful
when evaluating a new report, and look for independent confirmation of
reports before acting on them. However, I think this points out the need
for utter clarity when offering a virus report to the list. People will
act on them and there's no way of telling where something will end (sites
will pass info on to others, the report may end up in a publication somewhere,
etc.).
For the record, I think everyone does take a tremendous amount of care
with their reports and information, and the dedication of the group here
is really amazing. And of course, the Hombase people are at the top of
that heap. We'll our campus know that DOS power tools looks like a good
buy after all.
- --------------------------------------
Dennis Moynihan (DMOYNIHA@WAYNEST1)
Computing and Information Technology
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI