OSEC

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Bugtraq archives for 2nd quarter (Apr-Jun) 1995: Re: Windows 95 Espionage ( ?? )

Re: Windows 95 Espionage ( ?? )

Joe Konczal (konczalCSMES.NCSL.NIST.GOV)
Wed, 7 Jun 1995 10:03:33 -0400 

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Stott <jstottpoly.phys.cwru.edu> writes:

    Jonathan> It's more or less a hoax. ...

It's not so much a hoax as a misunderstanding.  Many people seem to
think that any code that does something unexpected or malicious, that
you don't want it to do, without getting your permission or telling
you, is a virus.  Apparently the program does send your directory
structure to Microsoft.  They seem to have carefully avoided denying
that, if their statement was reported accurately on bugtraq.

Here is something interesting from RISKS.

> Another [...] risk, is people outside the US posting crypto code to
> USENET, for instance my sig file below implements RSA encryption in
> 3 lines of perl.  If you are not familiar with encryption schemes,
> RSA is one of the most secure public key encryption schemes, and is
> the one used in PGP.  It is also very firmly on the ITAR export
> control list.
>
> Information on the sig is at:
>
>       http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
>
> Some US folks are printing a T-shirt with this code on it, in honour
> of ITAR, to produce an export controlled "munitions" T-shirt.