Download gatekeeper-130.hqx (322,288 KB)
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1993 16:38:22 -0600
From: chrisj@mbs.telesys.utexas.edu (Chris W. Johnson)
Subject: Gatekeeper 1.3 (yes, two in as many days)
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Gatekeeper 1.3 is a set of Macintosh system extensions (INITs)
and related control panels (cdevs) which, when active (i.e.
allowed to install themselves during the boot process) offer
protection against attacks by all known viruses (to the author
at the time of this release).
Gatekeeper also monitors computer activities for what are
considered to be suspicious 'events' or 'operations', in an
attempt to intercept what could be variants of known viruses or
even completely new viruses.
Since its initial release in January of 1989, Gatekeeper has
repeatedly demonstrated its ability to stop the spread of
viruses which were unknown during its design. Like any anti-
virus system, however, it cannot guarantee complete protection.
Of course, no claims or promises are made regarding Gatekeeper's
effectiveness or suitability, and some functions and capabil-
ities of Gatekeeper are non-trivial to use and may require a
careful reading of the documentation.
Gatekeeper 1.3 Release Notes 12-Nov-93
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Gatekeeper 1.3 was created the day after 1.2.9 was released to fix
a bug that caused all pre-7 systems to hang during startup, and
crashed some System 7.x machines.
For those of you wondering about the story behind the bug, and
why 1.2.9 missed its scheduled release date by three days, it's
pretty simple. When the new viruses appeared, I was in the middle
of work on a new and improved Gatekeeper which was going to be
version 1.2.9 in a couple of months. Unfortunately the work, while
mostly complete, still wasn't quite finished at the time those
viruses appeared. So I had to either (a) try to finish the new
improvements very quickly, or (b) rip them all out and return,
more or less, to the functionality of 1.2.8. I went for option
'b'. Unfortunately, while I was ripping out the nifty new code, I
overlooked one file in one of the ten or so projects that currently
combine to form Gatekeeper. Consequently, some of that new code
which wasn't quite finished was built into one portion of version
1.2.9. Since it was mostly working, it passed all my in-house
(actually "in-office" would be more accurate) tests prior to
release, but failed when it finally met up with the real world.
Why didn't I just go back to the archived 1.2.8 source? Because
there were some bug fixes and various uncontroversial (but
significant) improvements already in 1.2.9 which I certainly
wanted to be part of any new release.
So, here's 1.3; use it in good health. Please delete any copies of
1.2.9 that you may have laying around and spread the word that 1.3
is available.
[Thanks, BTW, go to Brian Price for allowing himself to be
dragooned into running some last minute tests.]
----Chris
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