re: [MacPerl] Ut desint vires,tamen est laudanda voluntas (MacPerl5 virus rumor)

[schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us (Paul Schinder)]

Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch> writes:
} Bill Middleton alerted me to a Usenet posting that a few hours later indeed
} arrived at my site. This posting alleges that MacPerl5, or at least the copy on
} mors.gsfc.nasa.gov, contains a virus.
} 
} Disinfectant 3.6 disagrees. To the best of my knowledge, there is NO virus.
} I've received reports in the past the Gatekeeper is unhappy with the fact that
} I store XCMDs in MacPerl library files, but that is definitely Gatekeeper's
} problem (While I can wholehartedly recommend Disinfectant and the Disinfectant
} INIT, both Gatekeeper and SAM have caused more trouble for me than ANY Mac
} virus ever did).

Just to clarify how MacPerl gets to mors:

Matthias announces a new version.  I go to one of his sites and grab
the MacBinary, downloading it to one of my Suns (it's all about
bandwidth).  I don't think either ftp.switch.ch or his other site,
whose name escapes me at the moment, is a Macintosh.  Then (while I ftp
the MacBinary to my Powerbook or tar it onto floppies for Sneakernet
home) I use mcvert to make a binhex of the Macbinary on my Sun. (I
serve binhex because I got tired of all the complaints that Matthias
got on the list about his sites having MacBinaries.)   So the last Mac
the binhex file sitting on mors has seen is Matthias'.  Because of
bandwidth considerations, I doubt this routine will change for a long time.

And while I suppose it's technically possible to hack a version of
mcvert on a Sun workstation to insert Macintosh viruses into files, I
have better things to do with my time than to learn how to do that.

(So *this* is why Matthias was downloading MacPerl from mors this
morning.  *That* struck me as rather strange...)
 
} 
} Thank you
} Matthias
} 
} -----
} Matthias Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch> http://err.ethz.ch/members/neeri.html
}   "What sort of idiot believes a USENET posting proves anything?  Paid your
}    modem tax lately?" -- Fritz Anderson
} 
---
--------
Paul J. Schinder
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Code 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
schinder@pjstoaster.pg.md.us