🚀 go-pugleaf

nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU (Nevin ":-]" Liber) writes:

>In article <405h3k$u4k@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de>, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
>(Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:

>> And you can be quite sure that any available source code has been
>> grepped by lots of competent C programmers for anything that might come
>> to their minds... 

>Yea, and the Internet Worm never happened, too. :-(

Oh yes, it happened, and showed a glaring mistake in one of the more common
networking daemons. It didn't do much harm, though (no data lost, just some
denial-of-service). When it happened, it was a matter of checking the logs
and taking a close look at the program, and everything was clear.

Oh, and today gcc has a warning that that one function is unsecure and
considered obsolete. 

Also, this was an honest to God programming _mistake_ that happened. It
wasn't a backdoor. Had it been a backdoor put there intentionally, the
author of said piece of code would have lost all his credentials in an
instant, and probably have faced a number of lawsuits. And evidence would
have been at hand quite easily. If MS puts something in (and by no way am I
implying they do), so connecting to MSN gives them access to something on
your computer, you have no way of proving it. No way, at least, short of
disassembling and reverse engineering their executables, which is in a grey
area between legal and illegal itself....

So yes, I prefer to trust utilities with source available. 

Bernie

-- 
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Anybody out there who knows how to connect a Wyse terminal keyboard to a PC
_without_ the terminal in between? Current keyboard lses chracters evr so
oftn.............  Getng wrs al te im. Hp!