discuss: virus writing HOWTO
Subject:
Re: virus writing HOWTO
From:
Ari Makela ####@####.####
Date:
10 Mar 2002 19:46:39 -0000
Message-Id: <20020310194308.GB4835@lagavulin.sappho.net>
On Sun, Mar 10, 2002 at 06:45:52PM +0100, Guylhem P Aznar wrote:
> But we are now starting to make moral assumptions. Right or Wrong. Good
> or Evil.
What is wrong with that?
> Virus are like knifes or guns. They are not "evil". They won't do
> anything bad by themselves. Somebody has to use them.
Well, guns do have wide spread legitime use - hunting, sport and armed
forces. I used myself quite a lot a Kalashnikov derivative during my
conscription time. I would not call that bad although there are people
who would. Computer viruses have no wide-spread harmless use although
in this thread someone wrote that their are used in biology related
sciences as models.
> The information we
> will spread may be used for good reasons or for bad reasons - we can't
> guess in advance.
But publisher does have some responsibility. For example, I think we
shouldn't publish "Make Sarin from Olive Oil and Islay Whisky with
Linux HOWTO" if would be possible to produce sarin from olive oil and
Islay whisky. One doesn't need to know how to make sarin in order to
protect oneself from it.
> Anyway, the LDP is teaching people and publishing documents.
And yet that does not mean LDP must publish anything it can.
> IMHO, free speech and freedom of the press are enough to justify the
> existence of such a document (and we don't know yet about its content)
If LDP does not publish the HOWTO it does not hurt free speech and the
freedom of the press at all. The author can publish his HOWTO somewhere
else if he wants to. A publisher has the freedom to choose what it
publishes.
We do not know the content but we do have Merril's word. Yes, I don't
want to judge before I've seen it either.
> I'd like to learn more about that to protect my system) great.
Yes, I do understand that. I feel likewise. However, many users have no
idea how to learn from this kind of HOWTO. They need clear guidelines
and instructions how to minimize the risk in their system. And there are
some easy guidelines beginning with "don't run applications as root
unless you absolutely have to" which give a lot of protection. They
should be added to the HOWTO.
As someone pointed out we should not think only of HOWTO's but also our
(and that of Linux Community) public image. While skilled crackers
already have this information it would not look good to have this HOWTO
without white hat information.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -w -- Ari Makela ####@####.#### http://arska.org/hauva/ #
