[105846] in Cypherpunks
Re: Is Open Source safe? [Linux Weekly News]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Gillogly)
Mon Nov 23 15:56:07 1998
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 12:29:16 -0800
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Frank O'Dwyer writes:
> Here we're talking about
> deliberately inserted back doors. Those can get extremely nasty, and may
> be unpatchable. Examples include "data kidnap" (encrypting the target's
> information in situ and demanding a ransom for the decryption key), and
> "data cancer" (slow corruption of the target's information, ensuring
> that the backups are also corrupted). ... I haven't heard of any real
> examples of such attacks, but that's not especially comforting.
The "data kidnap" scenario was tried with the "PC CYBORG (AIDS) virus"
(actually a Trojan) scare of 1989, where a disk with a database
application was sent to a number of recipients. I think it scrambled
the FAT. It gave a post office box in Panama for the ransom payments.
--
Jim Gillogly
Highday, 3 Foreyule S.R. 1998, 20:23
12.19.5.12.16, 8 Cib 9 Ceh, Fourth Lord of Night
