Home » Technology » Computer Security » Computer Security Weekly, April 12, 1999

Computer Security Weekly, April 12, 1999

© Robert Slade

Computers are, of course, everywhere. Being Computer Security Weekly readers, you, of course, know that there are lots of them in cars, with the attendant risks. A RISKS-FORUM Digest reader recently pointed out an interesting new twist on this. He bought a new car (a Ford Galaxy, as it happens), and the car took to opening the front windows while it was unattended.

---

Since I deal, every week, in technology going wrong, I should probably add an editorial comment every once in a while. Technology is a complex problem, and, as H. L. Mencken pointed out, for every complex problem there is a simple answer that is dead wrong. In the case of technology, the simple answer is not to use it. However, that is not an option. At the ultimate extreme, we can no longer afford to feed the population of the earth without a lot of technology. However, we don't have to go that far to see how complex the issue becomes. Commercial aircraft are starting to rely heavily on "fly by wire" systems, which can have dangerous failure modes. (This is a fancy term for when the plane crashes, and everybody dies, but somehow it wasn't the company's fault ...) But installing these systems cuts down, by a number of tons, the overall weight of the aircraft. Which means that fly by wire aircraft use less fuel, and generate less pollution ...

---

Been wondering how they caught the guy who wrote Melissa so fast? Well, bearing in mind that the question of whether they've got the right guy is still open, some material on Fred Cohen's Web site rather coyly implies that these guys might have been under surveillance even before Melissa was launched ...

---

A number of people, myself included, have been trying to ensure that the facts about Melissa were published abroad. I had an interesting experience in that regard. A system in New Zealand was running a filtering program called MailMarshal. My piece was bounced as a "hoax" virus warning ...

---

The ICQ chat and personal contact system is immensely popular. It is also notoriously insecure. There is a new function you can now get: a personal Webserver. Unlike Web hosting services, like Geocities and Tripod, where the content resides on their host computers, ICQ-Webserver allows you to keep the material on your computer, and thus have greater control and more convenience when making changes. Unfortunately, it's got a bug. With a fairly simple tweak of the URL, someone can read any file on your computer.

The copyright of the article Computer Security Weekly, April 12, 1999 in Computer Security is owned by . Permission to republish Computer Security Weekly, April 12, 1999 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.