Re: ms-sys contains MBRs which are copyrighted by Microsoft

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org>]

leorolla dijo [Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 06:23:59AM -0700]:
> For security reasons it could perform a checksum verification to
> protect the user from a corrupt or virus-infected backup file.
> 
> So the simple changes in the source would be:
> * remove the problematic file from the source code
> * change the source code to
> -look for a 446-byte file with a specific filename
> -if absent, produce error message explaining what the user is supposed
> to do and exit
> -perform the checksum verification
> -if fails, produce appropriate error message and exit
> -copy the file to the mbr
> 
> (Is it also be copyright violation to distribute checksums along with
> the program? In this case, add "look for the presence of a checksum
> file with a given name etc; if absent, produce an error message
> telling the user to copy it from a trusted source etc and exit".)

Humm... and given the search space is just giant (and not
mindboggingly huge), you could even add a loop that generates a random
446-byte-long content until it matches the md5sum and the sha1sum for
said file?

-- 
Gunnar Wolf • gwolf@gwolf.org • (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244