On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 01:42:53AM +1000, Russell Coker wrote: > On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 01:32, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > > I disagree with your conclusions regarding putting viruses in Debian. I > > > think it would be a useful service for people who analyse such things to > > > have copies of viruses in usable form. > > > > The EICAR.COM test pattern exists solely for that purpose. I wouldn't > > have any problem with putting testpatterns in packages that are supposed > > to do some security tests (or something similar), but putting viruses in > > the Debian archive is a bad idea. > > Test patterns can't be executed and thus miss most of the value of a live > virus for analysis purposes.
Ah, *that* kind of analysis :-) > I know that most people would disagree with me strongly on this issue, so I > wouldn't bother pushing it even if it wasn't for the issue of Debian packages > not being for arbitary binaries. > > > If I misunderstood you, please ignore this mail :-) > > I think you simply disagree with me so greatly on this issue that you > couldn't > believe I meant what I said. No, I really misunderstood you. In fact, I keep a copy of all viruses that are sent to me in a directory on my mailserver. Think of it as a collection; not that I would analyse them, but they could become handy for other purposes. > It's no big deal. As I have other reasons for thinking that live viruses > don't belong in Debian we can at least agree to not have them, even though we > disagree on the reasons for not having them. :-) [...] -- Wouter Verhelst Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org Nederlandstalige Linux-documentatie -- http://nl.linux.org "Stop breathing down my neck." "My breathing is merely a simulation." "So is my neck, stop it anyway!" -- Voyager's EMH versus the Prometheus' EMH, stardate 51462.
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