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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (13480)	8/8/1998 1:04:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Respond to of 152472

To all - (Yes, I'm still awake). More about the Eudora stuff August 7, 1998 Company Fixes E-mail Security Flaw A.P. INDEXES: TOP STORIES \| NEWS \| SPORTS \| BUSINESS \| TECHNOLOGY \| ENTERTAINMENT Filed at 6:22 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A software manufacturer has corrected a security flaw that could enable a hacker to destroy data or plant a virus on computers that run the company's popular Eudora e-mail program. Qualcomm Inc. planned to make the new version of the software available on its World Wide Web site. Company officials said in a news release Friday they were satisfied the problem no longer existed. However, Matthew Parks, manager of the Eudora line, said no program is 100 percent safe. ''There are a lot of malicious people who are attempting to do this, whether it's the challenge to break something or if they have other intentions in mind,'' he said of software hackers. ''There is no way to provide 100 percent security within a program.'' Massachussetts-based Phar Lap Software, which uses the Eudora software, found the problem Wednesday, Parks said. He said it was coincidental that it occurred about a week after flaws were revealed in two other popular e-mail programs, Microsoft's Outlook and Netscape's e-mail client, which comes with its Communicator suite. The Eudora problem was different, but ''the potential for damage was the same,'' Parks said. ''But it was not exploited. We've had no reports of damage.'' The flaw would have allowed someone to send Eudora users e-mail with coding that could erase files on the recipient's hard disk or plant a virus. It could have been triggered when the user clicked on a Web address to go to another Web page. Instead of going to the Web page, the click could have started up a program planted by a hacker. Parks urged users to use caution when accepting e-mail from strangers. ''The user should always be cognizant of who they get e-mail from and opening attachments. You should trust the person who sent them,'' he said. Eudora is one of the most widely used e-mail programs with about 18 million copies in circulation. An estimated half-million users were potentially affected by the flaw. They are users of Eudora Pro 4.0 and 4.0.1 and 4.1. The flaw is present in the Windows version, but not the Macintosh version. Earlier versions of Eudora are not affected. Last week, researchers announced a similar problem in the Microsoft and Netscape mail programs. Both companies now offer programming that users can download to fix the problem. ------ EDITOR'S NOTE -- Qualcomm has set up the following Web address to handle the Eudora security problems: eudora.qualcomm.com