The one-and-only anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com once stated: ! I snagged this off a news group this AM.. comments?? [ Part of previous message deleted ] ! It took the agency more to modify GNU C, but eventually they did it. ! The Free Software Foundation was threatened with "an IRS investigation", ! in other words, with being forced out of business, unless they complied. The ! result is that all versions of GCC on the FTP sites and all versions above ! 2.2.3, contain code to modify PGP and insert the trapdoor. Recompiling GCC ! with itself will not help; the code is inserted by the compiler into ! itself. Recompiling with another compiler may help, as long as the compiler ! is older than from 1992. I vote for Bogus, since it resembles too much a story from the ancient days of UNIX. This story stated that Ken Thompson modified the UNIX CC compiler to include a trapdoor in each version of (I think it was) the login program, thus ensuring the placement of a trapdoor enabling him to enter each and every system. After that (since all compiler passes are written in C) he modified the compiler to include this code (to modify the login program) into the compiler and compiled the compiler, after which he destroyed the original sources. Hope this story will not become the next "Good Time Virus" story or some similar hoax... -- GreetZ, Unicorn. ==== _ __,;;;/ TimeWaster on http://www.IAEhv.nl/users/hvdl ============ ,;( )_, )~\| Hans "Unicorn" Van de Looy PGP: ED FE 42 22 95 44 25 D8 ;; // `--; GSM: +31 653 261 368 BD F1 55 AA 04 12 44 54 '= ;\ = | ==== finger hvdl@sequent.com for more info ===================