TK0GRM1@NIU.BITNET (Gordon Meyer) (07/28/89)
A number of weeks somebody posed a question about software companies releasing viruses, on purpose, in order to protect their rights. At that time I responded with a reference to an article where a software author reportedly did know of several (or at least some) companies that were doing so. Obviously the sources for such information were not disclosed. I received a few flames for mentioning the article, but mostly from industry mouthpieces that wanted to emphatically deny such a thing was happening. Well...yet another "industry insider" has hinted that such things are happening: Home-Office Computing. August 1988. Page 80. In a games preview column the author states that some companies have developed "virus protection" for their programs.... this "virus protection" is designed to discourage crackers from re-engineering the program code to remove copy protection. That's all it says....very vague and could very well be another case of "virus" being used in the wrong context. But, the blurb does indicate that companies are doing so "secretly" and don't want folks to know about it. Again, turn off the flame throwers. I'm not saying such things *are* going on....just that there are indications that it *may* be. Screaming "no way" is ignoring the potential and fails to account for these rumours. - -=->G<-=-