C'mon, How Hard is it to Write a Virus or Trojan Horse? (was Re: Apology and clarification)

[Nathaniel Borenstein]

Excerpts from mail.cypherpunks: 1-Feb-96 Re: C'mon, How Hard is it t..
Jamie Zawinski at netscape. (2014*)

> > Is it your position that no systematic flaw in your security is real
> > until someone has actually broken it?

> Of course not.  You don't have to actually break it to show that it's
> possible.

> Of course, you *do* have to show the likelyhood of success and effort
> required to pull it off as well before it's interesting at all, whether
> it's theoretically possible or not.

OK, let's try this again:  Is it your position that the hardest part of
the attack we've outlined is the large-scale infection of consumer's
machines with untrusted code, using a virus, Trojan Horse, or some other
method?  And that this attack is not serious because doing that is
prohibitively difficult?  If so, I agree with the first claim but not
the second.  But I'm really trying to get clear about your position
here.  -- Nathaniel
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Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb at fv.com>
Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings
FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq at nsb.fv.com