🚀 go-pugleaf

I see that this was cross-posted to comp.misc, and perhaps someone else has
already answered it there.  But in any case, I have a few points to make, in
order of importance:

1. UUCP sites are in no known danger. When I heard that people had yanked their
  Telebits out of the wall after hearing about this, I remembered that most
  general-purpose damage done in plague situations is from the panic and mis-
  information.

2. USENET is a lousy way to get real live newswire-type information broadcast;
  in particular, this topic has been discussed at length in news.admin and
  news.announce.important as well as comp.bugs.4bsd.ucb-fixes.  Forwarding a
  piece of AP News is almost always silly, since news takes a few days to
  get everywhere -- when Challenger blew up, 20 people logged in and typed
  a short message about it.  I read about it in the next day's paper before
  I saw any of the USENET messages on the topic.

3. If anyone wants to discuss this, please do it in news.sysadmin.  Neither the
  worm (note: it's _not_ a virus) nor anything else I've said here has any
  business in ca.unix or comp.misc.  I've redirected followups, please respect
  that.

4. Do you really have anything to add?  If you have a one-line comment that
  you think is pretty cute, please try it out on your cat -- bandwidth spent
  on the worm in weeks to come is going to be horrendous, please don't add
  to it without a Compelling Reason.
--
Paul Vixie
Work:    vixie@decwrl.dec.com    decwrl!vixie    +1 415 853 6600
Play:    paul@vixie.sf.ca.us     vixie!paul      +1 415 864 7013

>Several major universities were shocked to find computer systems
>infected by a computer "virus," a renegade program potentially
>capable of destroying data.
>...says the virus came in through a nationwide network.

Yes, called the ARPANET (or Internet), not UUCP.  The virus does not
appear to spread via UUCP.

The Subject line of the original posting has a VERY BIG mistake in it.
The virus that attacked many computers around the country does NOT
propogate over UUCP.  It is quite specific to TCP/IP protocols, and
traveled over the DARPA Internet.

PLEASE, don't spread rumors without checking your facts.  This virus
caused enough trouble without such help.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

In an effort to clear the air of all the rumors etc:

There will be a formal session at the San Diego USENIX Conference on
"Virus, Worms and other UNIX Pests". We hope to have a panel discussion
as part of this session. It will be on Thursday Feb 2 from 8:00 PM onward.
Since we just added this session, this is all I can say at this time.

	Keith Muller
	Co-Chairman San Diego Usenix Conference

	muller@ucsd.edu