🚀 go-pugleaf

William Rini (billman@centcon.com) wrote:
: cbbrown@io.org (Christopher B. Browne) wrote:

: >Since they basically control things at both ends of the connection,
: >there's essentially no way to tell without using something like an
: >RS-232 sniffer, or disassembling the code.


: No way to tell other than the fact that Inter@ctive Magazine and
: several other publications have tried it and they all have come to the
: conclusion that the info that was transmitted was the info the RW
: asked if it could send.  Of course everybody keeps ignoring that fact
: so that they can go off on these wild joyrides with reality.  

How did they establish that there was only one time that information
was sent?  That there is no code in the microsoft networking package that
listens on an undocumented port that will send stuff at a request.  That would
give a survey of all software on the machine for marketting reasons -- no one
is going to leave a sniffer on their serial port for long enough to discover
anything being sent, especially if it is encrypted. 

Or, some programmer at microsoft could have left the same sort of thing in
as a backdoor.  How likely is this to be found?  Considering what I have heard
from interns at microsoft, the code is a large mass of scantily commented C, 
maintained by college students working for the summer, as well as their paid
programmers.. Knowing how college students are likely to leave backdoors in 
stuff, just as a part of the maturing process, how likely do you think it is
that all of these have been averted.


However, free operating systems like BSD and Linux are safe from this because
the source code can be gone through.  I have poked through the network stuff
trying to figure something out when playing with a problem with some of my
wierder code...  and others have gone through it exhaustively..  and with 
utilities to see activities on a Unix box, you can feel the computer like
it is your own body.. you would know if someone was molesting your machine.  


: What completely amazes me is that this thread
: continues despite the fact that not one piece of information had been
: presented that would even be lightly considered as evidence of
: wrongdoing.  

This thread continues because of the awesome potential present in a multi
tasking operating system that might have many interesting things, when used
in combination with a network that could offer unrestricted access. 

Maybe not Microsoft as a whole.. maybe someone who is going to find this
and play with machines.. maybe someone who paid a programmer to insert this
as a method for industrial espionage.. money talks, especially to programmers
who want to buy that new UltraSparc of their dreams.