Subject: RISKS DIGEST 18.49 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Weds 25 September 1996 Volume 18 : Issue 49 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. ***** Contents: Minnesota State Senate candidate photo "mistake"? (PGN) CIA disconnects home page after being hacked (PGN) Cracker Bill Passes Senate (Edupage) AOL Resumes Junk E-Mail Block, Settles Class Action Suit (Edupage) Massachusetts welfare fraud investigators fired: tax-record misuse (Saul Tannenbaum) Heart monitor software (Jim Garrison) Automated toll collection test fails (George C. Kaplan) Warning! NT 4.0 utility wipes system configuration (Alan Wexelblat) Re: An unlosable casino game (Hal Lockhart) FTC gets involved in P-trax debate (Bear R Giles) Re: Lexis-Nexis P-Trak (Robert Ellis Smith) Re: Cracker Attack Paralyzes PANIX (Stephen Tihor) The RISKS of using "personal" info in authentication (Roger Moar) More ATM Risks (Roger Altena) Re: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Bear Giles, Sidney Markowitz, Peter Jeremy, Mark Brader, Henry G. Baker, Erling Kristiansen) FWISC96 San Jose, CA (Mich Kabay) Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Sep 96 11:27:50 PDT From: "Peter G. Neumann" Subject: Minnesota State Senate candidate photo "mistake"? A photograph of Minnesota State Senate candidate John Derus appeared (without his name) on primary day in the *Star Tribune* , seemingly in connection with an article on a Philadelphia charity fraud case. Derus charges that the *Star Tribune* did this intentionally. (A lawyer for Derus cited a sworn statement from a caller who, upon complaining to the paper, was told that the use of the photograph ``may have been a personal act of vengeance by an individual employee for which the *Star Tribune* is not responsible.'' The *Star Tribune* had previously criticized Derus, and opposed him when he ran for mayor in Minneapolis in 1993.) The newspaper apologized and published an erratum the next day, claiming the mix-up was an innocent mistake resulting from a computerized system that assigns numbers to photos in which earlier photos had not been removed from the system. This case could represent another RISKS example of how muddy the line can be between an innocent mistake and a malicious act that masquerades as an innocent mistake -- a topic that I discuss in my book, *Computer-Related Risks*. [Source: *San Francisco Chronicle*, 24 Sep 1996, A10.] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Sep 96 11:29:54 PDT From: "Peter G. Neumann" Subject: CIA disconnects home page after being hacked The CIA web site (http://www.odci.gov/cia) was penetrated by a group of Swedish hackers on 18 Sep 1996, causing the CIA to pull the plug the following day. The altered home page said, "Welcome to the Central Stupidity Agency." It also had valid links to Playboy and hacker netsites, and fictional links to ``news from space'' and ``nude girls''. Apparently, the Swedish intruders were protesting a Swedish court case against a group of youths who were caught breaking into computers in 1991. The CIA is presumably restoring its earlier web pages, which included spy-agency press releases, speeches, and other publically available data, including CIA's World Fact Book -- all of course unclassified. [I just checked again before putting this issue out. The http address is still not working. The altered web-site content is reportedly at www.skeeve.net/cia . I did not check it.] On the same day as the CIA shut its home page down, the Justice Department reopened its home page (http://www.uswdoj.gov), which had been hacked into the "Department of Injustice" in August. [Source: *San Francisco Chronicle*, 20 Sep 1996, A12] [It will be interesting to see how these reminders (PANIX too) that the our infrastructure is rather weak will play out. RISKS readers have of course recognized the risks for many years, but Government policies have not consistently reflected them. The flurry of activity might just possibly encourage a change in attitudes toward security, encryption, strong authentication, etc., and generally a ratcheting up the integrity of the infrastructure -- although I am not holding my breath. However, a possible partial administration relaxation in export controls is reportedly being considered. Stay tuned. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 22:17:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Edupage Editors Subject: Cracker Bill Passes Senate (Edupage, 24 September 1996) A bill (S 982) that would make it easier to prosecute computer crimes passed the Senate last Friday, but its companion bill in the House (HR 4095) is not scheduled for any action. The National Information Infrastructure Act of 1996, sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) would explicitly outlaw: interstate or foreign theft of information by computer; blackmail and threats against computer systems and networks; and unauthorized use of computer systems. Leahy says a Carnegie Mellon University report found that more than 12,000 computers were attacked in more than 2,400 incidents in 1995. The Computer Systems Policy Project reports that U.S. companies lost somewhere between $2- and $4-billion last year due to security breaches in computer systems. (BNA Daily Report for Executives 20 Sep 1996, A35; Edupage, 24 September 1996) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 22:17:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Edupage Editors Subject: AOL Resumes Junk E-Mail Block, Settles Class Action Suit (24 Sep 1996) America Online has received permission from a federal appeals court in Philadelphia to resume its practice of blocking junk e-mail messages sent to its subscribers. Cyber Promotions Inc. had filed for and received an injunction earlier this month ordering AOL to end its practice of blocking unsolicited messages to its members from companies that specialize in "junk e-mail" for promotional purposes. A related lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in November. In a separate case, a judge in San Francisco tentatively approved a settlement to a class action suit brought by subscribers who claimed they were improperly charged for fractions of minutes that they didn't use. The settlement calls for refunds of $2.95 for each $300 in charges to former members. AOL's total payout could add up to $700,000, $200,000 more than was agreed to in the preliminary settlement. (*Wall Street Journal*, 23 Sep 1996; Edupage, 24 Sep 1996) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 20:23:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Saul Tannenbaum Subject: Massachusetts welfare fraud investigators fired: tax-record misuse >From *The Boston Globe*, Friday, 20 Sep 1996: Gov. William F. Weld's aides yesterday fired two state welfare-fraud investigators who allegedly browsed the confidential tax records of some of Boston's most beloved sports heroes. [...] The pair left ``electronic fingerprints'' after calling up the records of Larry Bird, Ray Bourque and Drew Bledsoe, along with those of two of the investigators' former bosses. It is unclear why they did it, or whether they snooped through anyone else's files. [...] Last week, when they discovered the breach of computer security by someone at the Bureau of Special Investigation, Department of Revenue officials revoked the bureau's access to private tax records. That access has yet to be restored. Saul Tannenbaum, Tufts University Computing and Communications Services stannenb@emerald.tufts.edu http://www.tufts.edu/~stannenb ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 11:34:37 -0500 From: Jim Garrison Subject: Heart monitor software My wife works as a physical therapist in a local hospital, which has several sub-disciplines of PT including cardiac rehab. The cardiac rehab department has an exercise area in which patients can use stationary bicycles while connected to heart monitoring equipment, under the supervision of a nurse. The following "interesting" (from a RISKS perspective) incident occurred last week. First, some background. According to my wife, the monitors have CRTs and display a standard EKG trace in a box, along with a large numeric heart-rate indicator. (Note: there are several different types of EKG devices, the most sensitive and discriminating being what is known a "twelve-lead" EKG. The monitor in use here is less sensitive, has fewer leads, and is intended for monitoring as opposed to diagnostic work). When connecting a patient to the monitor, part of the procedure involves setting a target heart rate. If the programmed rate is exceeded during exercise, the EKG trace turns red, but there is no audible alarm. There was at one time an audible alarm (on previous monitoring equipment) but it was considered more of a nuisance than a benefit, since it is normal to exceed the target by a few beats/minute for short periods of time and is not considered dangerous. The monitoring software also has an option that can double the amount of EKG trace displayed by compressing the time axis. This operation mode is almost never used. Now for the interesting part. A patient was attached to the monitor and began exercising. Somehow, unbeknownst to the nurse, the display was switched into compressed mode. When she glanced at the display, she saw what looked like a very high heart rate based on the spacing of the EKG peaks. She immediately went into "emergency mode", and set off a chain of events that led to starting an IV, calling the patient's doctor and preparing to administer a strong heart-rate-reducing drug. The doctor requested a 12-lead EKG for confirmation, at which point the error was discovered. Luckily, no drug had yet been administered. In declaring the emergency, the nurse had to miss or ignore a number of cues: 1) the numeric display still showed the correct heart rate (75) 2) the display had not changed color 3) the patient showed no signs of distress, remained totally calm, and repeatedly asserted he felt nothing out of the ordinary. While this is a fairly clear case of operator error, it's interesting to consider what the software designers could have done to make the error less likely: 1) Implement a progressive alarm system: < 10 bpm over target Yellow display, no alarm 10-20 bpm over target Yellow display, single beep every ten seconds > 20 bpm over target Red display, continuous alarm 2) Provide a mode indication on the display when in compressed mode (maybe change the color of the EKG trace) The first suggestion sounds good, but also might lead to complacency on the operator's part and excessive dependence on the alarm system itself, with more drastic consequences when IT fails. Sigh! Sometimes it seems like you just can't win. The second suggestion just highlights the fact that man-tool interface "modality" is something people are not used to dealing with, as RISKS readers are well aware. (Cite five examples of tools in existence before 1950 with more than one interface mode; how about before 1900?) Jim Garrison ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 22:01:47 -0700 From: "George C. Kaplan" Subject: Automated toll collection test fails An article in the 23 Sept. 1996 *San Francisco Chronicle* describes how Caltrans (California Dept. of Transportation) tested an automated toll collection system on the Carquinez Bridge, hoping to be able to use the system on all ten toll bridges in the state. The test failed because the error rate was too high: Caltrans wants a 99.95% success rate (5 errors for every 10,000 tolls), but the system could do no better than 99.1%. Apparently the system had trouble recognizing different types of [multiwheel] vehicles in order to charge the correct toll. The article didn't explain how the system is supposed to distinguish, say, a horse trailer from a big rig. A given vehicle may be in different toll classifications depending on what kind of trailer it's towing, so there must be some cues other than the encoding in the box carried on the vehicle. There was no discussion of correct toll amounts charged to the wrong person, or what drivers would have to do to correct incorrect bills. Nor was there any mention of privacy issues (such as government tracking of individuals movements) that have appeared in previous RISKS discussions of automated toll collection. George C. Kaplan gckaplan@cea.berkeley.edu 510-643-5651 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 18:54:51 -0400 From: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Subject: Warning! NT 4.0 utility wipes system configuration Forwarded-by: Logan Sanders NT users beware! Retail copies of both the Workstation and Server versions of Windows NT 4.0 shipped with an undocumented system-wiping utility. The file Rollback.exe erases key components of the system registry, disabling the operating system. Microsoft Corp. officials say that once the file has been executed, the changes cannot be undone and require a complete reinstallation of the operating system. At least one incident of accidental erasure has occurred and Microsoft is mulling over how to inform customers of the problem. This undocumented feature could do the most damage to NT4.0 Server users because it erases critical-security and user-account information. Without an up-to-date backup, network administrators will have to recreate all of the users' account and password profiles. Microsoft this week sent out an E-mail warning to its channel partners. It stated that after running the utility "the next thing the customer knows, they are staring at the set-up screen and are completely down." Rollback.exe was designed to allow OEMs to test NT with their hardware and software configurations, and then return systems to their pre-installation state. The file is located in the support\deptools\I386\ directory of the NT CD-ROM and is not installed on the system by default. But the lack of any online documentation or escape route once the program has begun has put curious users at risk. Microsoft officials say that more than 150,000 copies of NT Server 4.0 have been sold since its release in late July. Microsoft has posted an entry in its online Knowledgebase, but has not determined how it will notify customers and OEMs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 12:22:42 -0400 From: Hal Lockhart Subject: Re: An unlosable casino game (RISKS-18.48) > just click on "BACK" ... and you undo your loss! This reminds me of an bug I have seen in many computer-based gambling games: the failure to check for negative bets. I always try this and it frequently works. You just make a negative bet and lose on purpose and the game subtracts your bet from your winnings! Harold W. Lockhart Jr., Platinum Solutions Inc., 8 New England Executive Park Burlington, MA 01803 USA (617)229-4980 X1202 hal@platsol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 14:14:07 -0600 (MDT) From: bear@indra.com (Bear R Giles) Subject: FTC gets involved in P-trax debate According to Reuter's, on Monday the Federal Trade Commission recommended Congress tighten consumer confidentiality laws to help stop credit fraud and identity fraud. The body of the article clearly referred to the current uproar over the Lexis-Nexis database, although not by name. The article stated that in a letter to Sen. Richard Byran, D-Nev., the FTC stated that "fraud concerns outweighted the limited legitimate uses of this information for locating individuals." (quoting the article, not necessarily the letter.) The letter further recommended that the Fair Credit Reporting Act be amended to require a legal release before a person's maiden name, Social Security number, prior addresses and date of birth can be released. I didn't see a reference to phone numbers, despite the perception by many people that "unlisted" phone numbers aren't readily available from such sources. On an unrelated note, a brief note in the Saturday business section said that a three-judge appellate court overturned the lower courts injunction against AOL blocking spams from CyberPromotions. It's probably not a coincidence that the spam I received from them (non-AOL) on Monday highlights their new "block-proof, flame-proof" software. Bear Giles bear@indra.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 96 11:51 EST From: Robert Ellis Smith <0005101719@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: Lexis-Nexis P-Trak (RISKS-18.44) The furor over the Lexis-Nexis database (which at first had anybody's Social Security numbers available to any strangers subscribing to the service) has caused a 180-degree turnaround in Congress, where anti-consumer amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act have been close to passage for the past four years. Congressional offices are getting lots of angry messages about Lexis-Nexis, because people realize that the source of the data is "header information" or "above-the-line information" at the top of our credit reports. The Federal Trade Commission over the past seven years has allowed this identifying information to be sold by credit bureaus without any protections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (among other things, notice to the consumer). Now, Congressional Republicans are actually thinking about protecting header information and reversing the FTC. They are thinking twice too about voting for anti-consumer amendments to the FCRA. People who are upset about Lexis- Nexis can have a real impact this week if they promptly convey their outrage to Members of Congress, especially their Senators and notably Sen. Richard H. Bryan, Democrat of Nevada, who might be supportive, fax 202/224-1867, and Sen. Alphonse D-Amato, Republican of New York and chair of the Banking Committee, who is probably not supportive, fax 202/224-5871. Do it this week. [P.S. If Americans - and most users of the Internet - were more upset about the demands for photo ID in order to board an airplane than about the Lexis-Nexis data base, the people in Washington would take note and reverse this pernicious invasion of privacy. Write the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation, Members of Congress, and the news media.] Robert Ellis Smith Privacy Journal, Providence RI 401/274-7861 5101719@mcimail.com [I meant to insert a note earlier regarding the *pretense* that SSNs are hidden in P-Trak. If you have a CD-ROM version of the database, it is a very simple task to extract the SSNs. So much for "The SSNs are not accessible." PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 23:14:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Tihor Subject: Re: Cracker Attack Paralyzes PANIX (Edupage, 12 Sep 1996) In general the PANIX attacks simply mark the point in the life of the Internet where zero-cost zero-security stops being a reasonable marketing point. If the net is to survive then it or the part that plans to become useful must add enough authentication and auditability to be able to track back and associate bad actions with the actors. Once that is possible then normal time tested social mechanisms can be employed. The internation nature of the internet means telecomunication standards and web of bilateral agreements and the law of the sea probably bracket the techniques that will work. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 15:41:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Roger Moar Subject: The RISKS of using "personal" info in authentication I was looking for some financial information, and came across the Barron's Online WWW site during my search. I tried to enter an area that is restricted to members, and was asked for my username and password. As I don't have an account, I clicked on OK, and was allowed to "FIND my password". I put in a silly username, and was greeted with: "Hello John Doe. When you registered we asked you for your favorite color. Please enter your favorite color:" (The names and passwords here are obviously fictitious.) Naturally, I couldn't resist, and before I reached then end of the rainbow, I received: "Congratulations! Hello John Doe. Your password is 3246297684". I think the RISKS from this system are obvious. Repeated guesses of usernames brought up requests for the Mother's maiden name, date of birth, or favorite color. Additionally, the usernames are easily guessed, any proper name seems to be taken as a username. It's a nice way to give away information, but I'm not sure I would trust these people with my financial security... Roger Moar -- rmoar@csr.uvic.ca | http://apertos0.csc.uvic.ca/~rmoar ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 08:37:15 +1000 From: Roger Altena Subject: More ATM Risks In my earlier days I was one of a team of ATM programmers. We had a machine in the office, and we tested the software by holding on to cards and envelopes, putting rubbish in the money bin, not taking receipts, and every other thing we could think of. It was a terrific job! The operating system was specifically written for the ATM. It had instructions such as "get notes from hopper" and "present notes". If an instruction was used, the software automatically generated a mandatory error routine, which forced us to think of the correct action to take in each situation. It presented an error code with dozens of values for each instruction such as "less than the requested number of notes were presented", "some notes not taken", "all notes not taken", etc. These days the software in ATMs seems to be written using generic languages, and running on generic PCs. The risk is that by reducing costs, we take on the responsibility for thinking up each possible error ourselves, rather than leaving that job to a specialist who knows the hardware and its capabilities. We also rely on a system where the hardware consists of an ATM built by one company, a PC by a second company, interface hardware from the ATM to the PC by a third company. Then the PC operating system is written by a fourth company, the ATM controlling software by a fifth, and so it goes on. Needless to say, the risks for misunderstanding and omission are multiplied manyfold. Of course, this goes both ways. The hardware-specific software we used took up to 24 hours to generate, so the final software was full of patches applied through a hooked-in monitor. With modern PCs, a wide range of software development tools would greatly assist in producing stable and well structured code. Roger Altena roger@mincom.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 03:41:01 -0600 (MDT) From: Bear Giles Subject: Re: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (RISKS-18.48) Numerous people have written me directly to point out that C defines integers as a sequence of digits, and then uses unary negation for literal negative constants. I wish to point out that both the Gnu C and HP/UX (the only compilers I've used for the past four years until the past few months) define #define SHRT_MAX 32767 #define SHRT_MIN (-32768) Many compilers are fairly intelligent about how they handle literal constants and expressions; perhaps this is how some (but not all) compilers can accept -32768 directly. Bear Giles bear@indra.com [A few comments follow. Similar overlapping comments were received from many of you, including Dik.Winter@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter). Andy Newman , source@netcom.com (David Harmon), thorinn@diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen), "Kevin F. Quinn" . Jon Reeves , and perhaps others unread whose subject line was merely "RISKS-18.48". In addition, I excerpt starkly from some of the following replies. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 12:55:28 -0700 From: Sidney Markowitz Subject: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Giles, RISKS-18.48) [...] The problem is not with the Borland C compiler, which performs according to spec, but with Gnu Flex, which is generating C code that does not conform to the standard. Or perhaps the problem (and RISK) is with the type of thinking that expects people to see something like "(-32767-1)" in a large standards document and instantly understand all of the nuances of the standards committee's careful (and opaque) wording. -- sidney markowitz ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 08:39:08 +1000 (EST) From: Peter Jeremy Subject: Re: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Giles, RISKS-18.48) >Still, this situation is better than I would face when using a personal copy >of Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5. It limits SHRT_MIN to -32767. This is a bit more dubious. Unless Microsoft have done something strange to two's-complement arithmetic, I'd say the definition was wrong, since a short can contain a value less than SHRT_MIN. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Sep 96 02:16:45 EDT From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Giles, Risks-18.48) [...] People who find C a RISKy language will like to cite this quirk as evidence. On the other hand, the absence of negative numerical constants has its advantages -- for instance, it frees the programmer from ever having to wonder whether things like -1 and -(1) might behave differently in some contexts. [...] So here's another RISK -- a compiler where a warning *isn't* a warning. Instead it's 1/N of a fatal error, for some particular value of N. In my opinion that's a serious bug in the compiler. Mark Brader, msb@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 07:32:37 -0700 (PDT) From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker) Subject: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Giles, RISKS-18.48) So much for the 'science' part of 'computer science'... There is a trivial and elegant solution to the problem of the asymmetry of 2's complement integers and how to input and convert them. Low, James R. "A Short Note on Scanning Signed Integers". ACM Sigplan Notices 14, 1 (Jan. 1979), 55-56. Briefly, instead of keeping the number as a _positive_ integer, you keep it as a _negative_ integer (which has a greater range), and then convert back if it is positive! In other words, "err on the Low side". Pseudocode from Low's paper: RESULT := 0; while there are more digits, do RESULT := RESULT * 10 - current_digit; if sign is positive, then RESULT := - RESULT While we're on the subject, no one should be allowed near a numeric conversion routine until (s)he has read the following two papers: Clinger, William D. "How to Read Floating Point Numbers Accurately". ACM Sigplan'90 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, ACM Sigplan Notices 25, 6 (June 1990), 92-101. Steele, Jr., Guy L., and White, Jon L. "How to Print Floating-Point Numbers Accurately". ACM Sigplan'90 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, ACM Sigplan Notices 25, 6 (June 1990), 112-123. Henry Baker www/ftp directory: ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 09:03:52 +0200 (MET DST) From: Erling Kristiansen Subject: Re: When is -32768 != -32767-1 ? (Bear R Giles) This reminds me of a problem I had more than 10 years ago, using FORTRAN IV on an HP 1000. The comparison IF (I .EQ. J) results in FALSE when I and J are both -32768. This is because the HP 1000 has no COMPARE instruction, so, by necessity, the comparison is done by SUBTRACTING one number from the other. Subtracting -32768 from -32768 (in 2's complement arithmetic) yields -32768, and an overflow condition which is not tested for by the generated code. I was using this for comparing bit-patterns, and one of the patterns I was comparing against was Octal 100000 (= decimal -32768). This confused me for a while! ------------------------------ Date: 24 Sep 96 12:25:14 EDT From: Mich Kabay <75300.3232@CompuServe.COM> Subject: FWISC96 San Jose, CA NCSA is hosting its 2nd Firewall, Web & Internet Security Conference on Sept 30th and Oct 1st at the Red Lion Hotel, 2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA 95110. The exhibit hall is free and features most of the major developers of commercial firewall products. There will also be free vendor technical presentations open to exhibit hall visitors. Details about the conference can be obtained by sending EMail to fwcon96west@ncsa.com or by visiting the NCSA web site at www.ncsa.com. M. E. Kabay, Ph.D / Director of Education National Computer Security Association ------------------------------ Date: 15 Aug 1996 (LAST-MODIFIED) From: RISKS-request@csl.sri.com Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks) The RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest. Its Usenet equivalent is comp.risks. => SUBSCRIPTIONS: PLEASE read RISKS as a newsgroup (comp.risks or equivalent) if possible and convenient for you. Or use Bitnet LISTSERV. Alternatively, (via majordomo) DIRECT REQUESTS to with one-line, SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) [with net address if different from FROM:] or INFO [for unabridged version of RISKS information] => The INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites, .mil/.uk subscribers, copyright policy, PRIVACY digests, etc.) is also obtainable from http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html ftp://www.CSL.sri.com/pub/risks.info The full info file will appear now and then in future issues. *** All contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. *** => SUBMISSIONS: to risks@CSL.sri.com with meaningful SUBJECT: line. => ARCHIVES are available: ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks or ftp ftp.sri.comlogin anonymous[YourNetAddress]cd risks or http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html [i.e., VoLume, ISsue]. The ftp.sri.com site risks directory also contains the most recent PostScript copy of PGN's comprehensive historical summary of one liners: get illustrative.PS ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 18.49 ************************