I was forwarded the following E-mail by Judd Spence of Ultraaccess (The guys who sell netbus, and the gentleman nice enough to host me):
From:
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2000 8:51 PM
To: admin@ultraaccess.net
Subject: Court Hearing in New Zealand regarding the use of your software. I hope to Win !!Firstly here is basically what happened..... About this time last year, two employees (PC Support personnel) were both fired for "un-authorized software" from a local Health and Medical facility. The employment contracts don't have any rules about the use or miss use of software. The main reason they were fired was because they were exploring what Netbus could do, and if it could be useful as a support tool. This was the "un-authorized software" the company referred to as being the reason for their dismissal.
The bottom line is, if it hadn't been branded by Virus Software vendors as a " Trojan ". They would still have a job. Their ex-employer is clutching to their idea of Industry Practice, saying that as employees they should have known better than to install Trojan software onto their computers (making out it was installed throughout their departments). The employees had no idea it had been labeled as a Trojan in the first place.
The court case against the employer is set for June 22nd 2000. The ex-employees are suing for costs, loss of earnings, and personal grievances, and hope to further vindicate Netbus as a useful support tool and not just some Trojan as some people claim.
As an involved party in this incident, I am helping in any way I can. I have taken copies of the info on your web site referring to the back down of Mcafee and so on.
If you have anything else that strengthens Netbus as a useful application, or any further documentation, I would greatly appreciate your help.
I look forward to your reply.
Cheers,
(Name Witheld)
Now this court case brings up an issue that I never really considered. Anti-Virus definitions can be wielded like clubs in certain cases.
To maintain something resembling journalistic integrity, I wanted to find out more, so I went to the source and called the author of the above to get the dirt. The phone connection was only single duplex, making it interesting to talk, but it worked (My phone bill is gonna cost me a bundle for this one. Oh well, if I get better news to you, it's worth it)
Here's the skinny:
About a year ago, 2 workers, one of which was on a software contract and the other was a support contract, both working the tech desk at a hospital. Well, these 2 were looking for a program to assist in that function. Someone in the department recommended Netbus. These 2 blokes tried it and liked what they found. One of them did use it to play a joke on an unsuspecting employee, nothing malicious. Everyone had a laugh, even the 'victim' ,grudgingly.
After playing with it for a bit, they took it to thier manager (Manager A) and extolled it's virtues as a remote admin tool for tech support. The manager recognized it as a 'trojan horse' and could'nt get past that fact. Manager A scolded the workers for using such an 'evil' program on the company computers and left it at that. (Even though many other employee's are reported to have brought programs from home, often pirated, and installed them with no problems from above). In comes Manager B, who does'nt like Manager A and is always trying to get them fired. Manager B gets wind of this situation and basically blows it up to 'there is a trojan virus loose on the network of this hospital, ahh, run!!' and so on and so forth (the servers were installed on a maximum of 3 machines to my knowledge). The 2 workers are terminated
Now the interesting part is that these guys did'nt take this lying down. They are suing for costs, loss of earnings, and personal grievances from the hospital administration. The court case is schedualed for June 22nd 2000. If any Kiwi's are reading this, and you have a web link for this case, Mail me. It should prove interesting with the recent Netbus Developments. As my conact in this case stated, "When the greeks used the trojan horse to get inside the walls of troy, they could have filled it with warriors, or clowns. It's not the meathod or the device, it's the person using it, and the end result.
The defense is holding onto the idea that it should have been industry practice to not install a trojan, but with all the controversy, what are you supposed to call it right now? Product, Trojan, Remote admin, Virus?
What is at stake is the fact that peoples lives can be destroyed by whatever the AV companies list. Once something has a trojan/virus label attached to it, it's a mighty hard spot to wash out of peoples minds. I'll be keeping an eye on this case.
I'll keep you informed as details become available to me