The Worms Crawl In 257From: Klaus Brunnstein
[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: UNIX InSecurity (beyond the Virus-Worm)
[...random security stuff...]
While the Virus-Worm did evidently produce only limited
damage (esp. ‘eating’ time and intelligence during a 16-hour
nightshift, and further distracting activities in follow-up
discussions, but at the same time teaching some valuable
lessons), the consequence of the Unix euphoria may damage
enterprises and economies. To me as an educated physicist,
parallels show up to the discussions of the risks overseen by
the community of nuclear physicist. In such a sense, I slightly
revise Peter Neumann's analogy to the Three-Mile-Island and
Chernobyl accidents: the advent of the Virus-Worm may be
comparable to a mini Three-Mile Island accident (with large
threat though limited damage), but the ‘Chernobyl of
Computing’ is being programmed in economic applications if
ill-advised customers follow the computer industry into
insecure Unix-land.
Klaus Brunnstein
University of Hamburg, FRG