From: padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Philosophy
Date: 13 Nov 92 19:05:58 GMT

From:    fc@turing.duq.edu (Fred Cohen)

>IT has now run for 3 years without any known virus bypassing the
>defenses.

>Many get part of the way through, and some get to the
>point where the syst is allmost unuseable, but none have gone
>undetected, and none have been unrecoverable!

Congratulations & it *can* be done with integrity managagement. IMHO
viruses are a done deal, the real concerns need to migrate to LANs and
directed attacks.

>For the above reasons, I daily deal with the problem of providing
>information on how to build better defenses vs. protecting my income
>by keeping our techniquers secret.  Unlike those at a University or a
>big company, it directly impacts my income (in a negative way) every
>time I publish a paper on virus defenses.  In my opinion, everyone
>should submit their techniques to a refereed journal.  

Personally, that has never been a concern since what I give away is
rarely what I am working on today and by giving thing away this means
that others put their good people on figuring it out. This puts them
further behind.  Next, the calls for help tell me where they are and I
have spent my life working myself out of a job anyway (gets boring
doing the same thing).

Do admit to holding some things back since am reluctant to provide a
tutorial for the adversary. Major problem nowadays is compatability
with new software such as QEMM "stealth" and "32BitDiskAccess".

To "impact my income (in a negative way)" implies a positive income to
impact. I have a reasonable eight-year-old-car-for-commuting type
income but my job has nothing to do with PCs (as I am repeatedly
told). But then my whole aim in life is to never think about money.
What I have found is that the *best* toys you either get for free or
you do not get them at all.

  			Serious Note (well sorta)

What we really need is a properly funded National Computer Security
Laboratory - not for profit so donations can be written off, coupla
million seed for toys, moving, and a proper site, Fred as chief
scientist, me as chief cable splicer and translator for Fred. Lee
Iacocca or Ross Perot as fund raiser, Al Gore can be "worthy
figurehead" as long as he is willing to learn.

I've said this before and support anything that even looks like it
*might* be a starting point but think it was a disgrace when NIST
abandoned the PC two years ago (I understand the funding problem and
the government is "officially" POSIX - not the first time the sun has
been told to rise in the West), and it was a disgrace that the
Michelangelo hysteria got so far out of hand (and would have been lots
worse if Mich had been written by a professional).

Unfortunately, it is probably going to take a real disaster for
anything to happen (Homer Simpson may push the wrong button yet) and
then watch out for the backlash.

Several of us breathed a sigh of relief when election day passed
without any real incidents - worst I've heard about was the box in
California that sent a "No" for every "Yes" vote and vicea-versa -
wonder how those voters felt when told that "it really did not matter
anyway".

But then I was relieved that no suitcases went off on Jan 15, 1991 -
good thing the Soviet Union did not break up a couple of years
earlier.

>p.s. I wish I could edit out the spelling errors before sending these
>mail messages - do you get all the ^h's on your screen too?

Well, WordStar does a nice job (when I remember to use it) - you must
be using a UNIX box - even the VAX allows editing of MAIL - or maybe a
CRAY ?

[Moderator's note: _This_ UNIX box allows me to edit messages...]

				Warmly now but Chicago manana,

						Padgett

ps. Today Martin-Marietta announced that it has no plans to move out of
    Orlando.