From: ab411@detroit.freenet.org (David R. Conrad)
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 15:54:40 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)
Message-ID: <199507202254.SAA11508@detroit.freenet.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Ray Arachelian <sunder@escape.com> writes:
>On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>
>> ["virus hackers"]
>>
>>                                              ...  What viruses have to
>> do with encryption is that encryption makes it easier to prevent viruses,
>> and Senator Grassley wants to stop that.
>
>Erm, not quite.  Stealth viruses supposedly use "encryption" to hide 
>themselves....

Perhaps he was referring to the use of (cryptographically strong) hashes
to implement integrity checking?  Or authentication of software
distribution channels?

>Still, you could write beneficial viruses, or virus like programs that 
>are beneficial in nature in some way. KOH for instance?

The problem is, it's awfully hard to come up with a case where a beneficial
virus can't be replaced with a similar program that has the same features,
but lacks the ability to copy itself.

KOH is a good example.  There are plenty of good encryption programs out
there, so what is the advantage to making it a virus?  Precious little.
On the other hand, problems crop up, like: What if there are bugs in it?
How do you "call it back" and replace it with a bugfixed version?  How
does someone know, when it shows up on their machine, that it is still
the original beneficial program, and hasn't been turned into something
malicious?

This is pretty far off the subject for Cypherpunks, though.  (I suppose
it could come with a PGP signature, the key being well-known, and that
would both answer the question of whether it'd been modified as well as
tie this back into cpunks. :)

--
David R. Conrad, ab411@detroit.freenet.org, http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/
Finger conrad@grfn.org for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page
Key fingerprint =  33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5  D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50
No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.