[comp.sys.mac.misc] WARNING: possible Trojan

johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (01/05/91)

In article <VGT^57|@rpi.edu>, afton@itsgw.rpi.edu (Alan S. Blue) writes...
[on behalf of <jaesyn@anchor.apl.washington.edu>]

>	This is a warning to Mac users everywhere...  there may be a possible
>Trojan horse on the archives at rascal.  On Monday, Dec 31, I downloaded the

I am posting the following explanation/retraction at the request 
of Jason Smith.  His site is experiencing a temporary news server
problem.

Return-Path: <jaesyn@anchor.apl.washington.edu>
From: jaesyn@apl.washington.edu (Jason Smith)

----------------

	Tuesday, I posted a note stating that my internal hard drive on my
IIsi crashed when I was running StuffIt Classic Installer downloaded from
rascal.ics.utexas.edu's Mac archives.  I asked for someone to please test the
file in a secure system, and let me know the results.  I was afraid that
someone had uploaded a trojan under the name of SCI, that disabled, erased, or
trashed the SCSI EPROMs to the internal drive.  My observations at that time
upheld this theory.  Subsequently, I have ascertained that SCI had nothing to
do with the crash, and that it was merely a faulty drive.  SCI was merely an
innocent bystander.
	Aladdin (the authors of SCI) have been very helpful and gracious
towards me, and even offered to send me a copy of StuffIt Deluxe 2.0.1 as a
token of their apologies, even though SCI had nothing to do with my problems.
Aladdin's customer support could teach Apple a thing or two (I'm having to 
replace the drive through an Apple dealer... not fun) and I would like to
thank them in a most sincere manner.
	Rascal's archives are clean, and I apologize for any problems I may
have caused them.  They have one of the best Mac archives around, and if you
haven't checked them out, do so.  They pulled SCI from their read-enabled
archives soon after I posted, but I am sure they are getting it back up soon.
One last thing... I was not 'spreading malicious rumors' as posted earlier by
a member at rascal, only the facts as I had them at the time.
	So, use SCI as you wish, it is a good program, and still the standard.
Thanks again to the gang at Aladdin, and special thanks to Bill Johnston at
UDel for his help in pointing me to them and running correspondence. Apologies
to Aladdin, rascal, and anyone who may have panicked from my posting.

Jason Smith
Univ of Washington
Applied Physics Lab

jaesyn@apl.washington.edu