Hello again, On 17-Sep-97 Pontus Ekman wrote:

I move RIPE that takes the suggested task force under consideration. The major problem may be to keep any analysis and proposed countermeasures out of the adversaries�hands.

I believe that this is exactly the same theory behind having the CERT or not. Security alerts are issued for interested parties because it's better to know where the security risks *are* and plug them then stop disseminating security loopholes because potential hackers may use exactly the CERT alerts to hack other machines... Tools like SATAN and others exist to detect security flaws on you own machines and to help you out eliminating those security risks. Of course hackers will happily use SATAN and related tools to attack other people's machines. It's a compromise between sharing your know how and letting the potential hackers know what you know. I believe that the same applies to anti-spamming techniques. - Luis ____ \ Esoterica - Novas Tecnologias de Informacao, SA :-) Luis Miguel Sequeira /___, lms@esoterica.pt http://www.esoterica.pt/