Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/UNDERGRD/VOL_3/CUD316C.TXT

Text File | 1994-11-01 | 10KB | 220 lines

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From:   Anonymous
Subject: Prodigy under Fire
Date:  Thu, 9 May 91 01:22:52 CDT

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***  CuD #3.16: File 3 of 6: Prodigy under Fire                  ***
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     News of the Earth           Global news and information
                           *     from electronic and print sources
           supplements   *   *   edited by
                           *     Regina P Knight, Geert K Marien
        ISSN 1052-2239           and John B Harlan

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       Subject:   Prodigy
Contributed by:   Donna B Harlan
                  Harlan@IUBACS / [e-mail]

   News source:  Help-Net (BITNET/CREN/Internet Help Resource)
                   on ListServ@TempleVM
          Date:  Thu, 2 May 91 12:31:52 CST
Original title:  Prodigy
    and author:  Suzana Lisanti <[e-mail]>
         Notes:  This was forwarded from Help-Net to Roots-L
                   (Genealogy List) on ListServ@NDSUVM1


              *****  Start of forwarded material  *****

----------------------------Original message------------------------
I'm forwarding this message regarding Prodigy... I have no idea
if it's true or not...
------------------ Beginning of forwarded message -----------------
        The L. A. County District Attorney is formally investigating
PRODIGY for deceptive trade practices.  I have spoken with the
investigator assigned (who called me just this morning, February 22,
1991).

We are free to announce the fact of the investigation.  Anyone can
file a complaint.  From anywhere.

The address is:

District Attorney's Office
Department of Consumer Protection
Attn: RICH GOLDSTEIN, Investigator
Hall of Records   Room 540
320 West Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Rich doesn't want phone calls, he wants simple written statements
and copies (no originals) of any relevant documents attached.  He
will call the individuals as needed, he doesn't want his phone
ringing off the hook, but you may call him if it is urgent at 1-213-
974-3981.

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION EXTRA CAREFULLY.  YOU NEED NOT BE IN
CALIFORNIA TO FILE!!

        If any of us "locals" want to discuss this, call me at the
Office Numbers: [phone]; [phone].  Remember, the next
time you pay your property taxes, this is what you are supposed to
be getting ... service.  Flat rate?  [laugh] BTW, THE COUNTY IS
REPRESENTING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.  This ISN'T limited to L. A.
County and complaints are welcome from ANYWHERE in the Country or
the world. The idea is investigation of specific Code Sections and
if a Nationwide Pattern is shown, all the better.

LARRY ROSENBERG, ATTY

  Prodigy: More of a Prodigy Than We Think?
  By: Linda Houser Rohbough

     The stigma that haunts child prodigies is that they are
difficult to get along with, mischievous and occasionally, just flat
dangerous, using innocence to trick us. I wonder if that label fits
Prodigy, Sears and IBM's telecommunications network?

     Those of you who read my December article know that I was
tipped off at COMDEX to look at a Prodigy file, created when Prodigy
is loaded STAGE.DAT. I was told I would find in that file personal
information form my hard disk unrelated to Prodigy.  As you know, I
did find copies of the source code to our product FastTrack, in
STAGE.DAT. The fact that they were there at all gave me the same
feeling of violation as the last time my home was broken into by
burglars.

     I invited you to look at your own STAGE.DAT file, if you're a
Prodigy user, and see if you found anything suspect. Since then I
have had numerous calls with reports of similar finds, everything
>from private patient medical information to classified government
information.

     The danger is Prodigy is uploading STAGE.DAT and taking a look
at your private business. Why? My guess is marketing research, which
is expensive through legitimate channels, and unwelcomed by you and
I.  The question now is: Is it on purpose, or a mistake?  One caller
theorizes that it is a bug. He looked at STAGE.DAT with a piece of
software he wrote to look at the physical location of data on the
hard disk, and found that his STAGE.DAT file allocated 950,272 bytes
of disk space for storage.

     Prodigy stored information about the sections viewed frequently
and the data needed to draw those screens in STAGE.DAT. Service
would be faster with information stored on the PC rather then the
same information being downloaded from Prodigy each time.

     That's a viable theory because ASCII evidence of those screens
shots can be found in STAGE.DAT, along with AUTOEXEC.BAT and path
information. I am led to belive that the path and system
configuration (in RAM) are diddled with and then restored to
previous settings upon exit. So the theory goes, in allocating that
disk space, Prodigy accidently includes data left after an erasure
(As you know, DOS does not wipe clean the space that deleted files
took on the hard disk, but merely marked the space as vacant in the
File Allocation Table.)

     I received a call from someone from another user group who read
our newsletter and is very involved in telecommunications.  He
installed and ran Prodigy on a freshly formatted 3.5 inch 1.44 meg
disk. Sure enough, upon checking STAGE.DAT he discovered personal
data from his hard disk that could not have been left there after an
erasure. He had a very difficult time trying to get someone at
Prodigy to talk to about this.

                           --------------

Excerpt of email on the above subject:

THERE'S A FILE ON THIS BOARD CALLED 'FRAUDIGY.ZIP' THAT I SUGGEST
ALL WHO USE THE PRODIGY SERVICE TAKE ***VERY*** SERIOUSLY.  THE FILE
DESCRIBES HOW THE PRODIGY SERVICE SEEMS TO SCAN YOUR HARD DRIVE FOR
PERSONAL INFORMATION, DUMPS IT INTO A FILE IN THE PRODIGY
SUB-DIRECTORY CALLED 'STAGE.DAT' AND WHILE YOU'RE WAITING AND
WAITING FOR THAT NEXT MENU COME UP, THEY'RE UPLOADING YOUR STUFF AND
LOOKING AT IT.

     TODAY I WAS IN BABBAGES'S, ECHELON TALKING TO TIM WHEN A
GENTLEMAN WALKED IN, HEARD OUR DISCUSSION, AND PIPED IN THAT HE WAS
A COLUMNIST ON PRODIGY. HE SAID THAT THE INFO FOUND IN
'FRAUDIGY.ZIP' WAS INDEED TRUE AND THAT IF YOU READ YOUR ON-LINE
AGREEMENT CLOSELY, IT SAYS THAT YOU SIGN ALL RIGHTS TO YOUR COMPUTER
AND ITS CONTENTS TO PRODIGY, IBM & SEARS WHEN YOU AGREE TO THE
SERVICE.

     I TRIED THE TESTS SUGGESTED IN 'FRAUDIGY.ZIP' WITH A VIRGIN
'PRODIGY' KIT.  I DID TWO INSTALLATIONS, ONE TO MY OFT USED HARD
DRIVE PARTITION, AND ONE ONTO A 1.2MB FLOPPY.  ON THE FLOPPY
VERSION, UPON INSTALLATION (WITHOUT LOGGING ON), I FOUND THAT THE
FILE 'STAGE.DAT' CONTAINED A LISTING OF EVERY .BAT AND SETUP FILE
CONTAINED IN MY 'C:' DRIVE BOOT DIRECTORY.  USING THE HARD DRIVE
DIRECTORY OF PRODIGY THAT WAS SET UP, I PROCEDED TO LOG ON.  I
LOGGED ON, CONSENTED TO THE AGREEMENT, AND LOGGED OFF. REMEMBER,
THIS WAS A VIRGIN SETUP KIT.

     AFTER LOGGING OFF I LOOKED AT 'STAGE.DAT' AND 'CACHE.DAT' FOUND
IN THE PRODIGY SUBDIRECTORY.  IN THOSE FILES, I FOUND POINTERS TO
PERSONAL NOTES THAT WERE BURIED THREE SUB-DIRECTORIES DOWN ON MY
DRIVE, AND AT THE END OF 'STAGE.DAT' WAS AN EXACT IMAGE COPY OF MY
PC-DESKTOP APPOINTMENTS CALENDER.

     CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF.

 ### END OF BBS FILE ###

I had my lawyer check his STAGE.DAT file and he found none other
than CONFIDENTIAL CLIENT INFO in it.

Needless to say he is no longer a Prodigy user.


Mark A. Emanuele   V.P. Engineering  Overleaf, Inc.
218 Summit Ave   Fords, NJ 08863   [phone]
[e-mail]


               *****  End of forwarded material  *****


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