Gatekeeper version 1.3 of 12-Nov-93 by Chris Johnson (c)1988-1993 "READ ME" This distribution consists of the following files: 1. Gatekeeper READ ME.txt - TeachText document 2. Gatekeeper Introduction - Microsoft Word document 3. Gatekeeper Introduction.txt - Text version of item 2. 4. Gatekeeper FAQ.txt - TeachText document 5. Gatekeeper Mailing List.txt - TeachText document 6. Gatekeeper - system extension (INIT) 7. Gatekeeper Aid - system extension (INIT) 8. Gatekeeper Controls - control panel (cdev) 9. Gatekeeper Extras Folder - folder containing the following: 9.1. Gatekeeper Extras READ ME.txt - TeachText document 9.2. Gatekeeper Privilege Mover - control panel (cdev) 9.3. Gatekeeper Privileges.txt - Privilege Mover text file 9.4. Gatekeeper Application - application If you haven't used Gatekeeper before, begin by reading "Gatekeeper Introduction." If you are familiar with previous versions, but not 1.2.x, note that enough has changed that a glance at that introduction wouldn't hurt. Take a look at the installation instructions, in particular. The Microsoft Word documents included in this distribution use the Helvetica, Times and Monaco/Courier fonts, and were setup for a LaserWriter printer. In order to appreciate the reasonably decent formatting in those documents, make sure you have those fonts installed, and select the LaserWriter driver in your Chooser, if that's convenient. Unfortunately, if you won't be opening these documents in Microsoft Word, but will be reading them into some other word processor, the nice formatting will probably be lost in translation. Sigh. By the way, Gatekeeper's Help display will also look a lot better if the Helvetica, Times and Monaco fonts are present in your system. Of course, no claims or promises are made regarding Gatekeeper's effectiveness or suitability, and some functions and capabilities of Gatekeeper are non-trivial to use and may require a careful reading of the documentation. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.3 Release Notes 12-Nov-93 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.3 was created the day after 1.2.9 was released to fix a bug that caused all pre-7 systems to hang during startup, and crashed some System 7.x machines. For those of you wondering about the story behind the bug, and why 1.2.9 missed its scheduled release date by three days, it's pretty simple. When the new viruses appeared, I was in the middle of work on a new and improved Gatekeeper which was going to be version 1.2.9 in a couple of months. Unfortunately the work, while mostly complete, still wasn't quite finished at the time those viruses appeared. So I had to either (a) try to finish the new improvements very quickly, or (b) rip them all out and return, more or less, to the functionality of 1.2.8. I went for option 'b'. Unfortunately, while I was ripping out the nifty new code, I overlooked one file in one of the ten or so projects that currently combine to form Gatekeeper. Consequently, some of that new code which wasn't quite finished was built into one portion of version 1.2.9. Since it was mostly working, it passed all my in-house (actually "in-office" would be more accurate) tests prior to release, but failed when it finally met up with the real world. Why didn't I just go back to the archived 1.2.8 source? Because there were some bug fixes and various uncontroversial (but significant) improvements already in 1.2.9 which I certainly wanted to be part of any new release. So, here's 1.3; use it in good health. Please delete any copies of 1.2.9 that you may have laying around and spread the word that 1.3 is available. [Thanks, BTW, go to Brian Price for allowing himself to be dragooned into running some last minute tests.] --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.9 Release Notes 11-Nov-93 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.9 was created to deal with the CODE 1 and MBDF-B viruses. The latter, MBDF-B, was already dealt with by previous releases, but code was added to explicity identify the virus as the "B" strain instead of as an "unknown" strain. At the same time, some improvements have been made. These include the elimination of a known false-positive identification of the INIT 1984 virus, the further refinement of address sanity checking code (and its application in a couple of new places), the addition of some new privileges, the elimination of the conflict between version 1.2.8 and System 7 Tuner, and probably a couple more things I can't remember at the moment. :-) BTW, there's now a mailing list for Gatekeeper update notices, etc. See the "Gatekeeper Mailing List.txt" document for details. Special thanks go to John Norstad for his analysis of CODE 1 which saved me a lot of time over doing my own. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.8 Release Notes 17-Aug-93 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.8 is a maintenance release which corrects problems found in 1.2.7, works around weirdness in some forthcoming Apple software, and extends the default privilege list as usual. Remember that in order to see the new privileges, you must first throw away the existing "Gatekeeper Prefs" file. Don't bother trying to empty the Trash, just put the prefs file in there. Once you've installed the new Gatekeeper and rebooted, you'll be able to empty the Trash. If you don't do all this, Gatekeeper will continue to use the old prefs file, and you won't benefit from any of the new privileges that have been added. Some of the changes include: Ą Copying files from the Finder when QuickDraw GX is installed no longer generates privilege violations. 1.2.8 includes a less than wonderful, but good-enough-for-now, workaround for the strange changes made to the Finder supplied with GX. (Just make sure the Network Extension is installed on your Mac.) Ą Four patches have been eliminated. Examination of their practical value showed that Gatekeeper would work just as well without them, and every patch eliminated is, of course, one less source of problems down the road.... Ą Behavior under interrupt conditions has been improved. Ą Address sanity-checking code has been added/improved. The effects of these changes include the elimination of conflicts with GraceLAN Responder and the VersaTerm ftp server. A few problems are still reported to exist in 1.2.8. One tester reports that neither it, nor 1.2.7, will work in a Mac IIci equipped with a Daystar 33MHz Turbo 040 accelerator. Another tester reports a conflict with the Global Village TelePort fax modem control panel, but only on a PowerBook 170, not on other CPUs. Mysterious bus errors are reported by another tester. Everyone else, however, gives it a clean bill of health. As usual, there's no such thing as bug free software. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.7 Release Notes 19-Jan-93 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.7 does two things: (1) it corrects a number of bugs found in 1.2.6 following its release, and (2) it significantly improves Gatekeeper's ability to determine the identity of the programs whose activity it monitors. This last change involved a complete replacement of the host identification code in 1.2.6, which was, itself, a significant enhancement over the same code in all previous versions. The new code is not only far more effective, but significantly smaller and faster as well. A few of the bugs eliminated: Ą A 68000 incompatibility normally associated with expanding the privilege list. Typically this caused Mac Pluses, SEs, etc. to crash when adding a new item to the privilege list. Ą The After Dark screen saver loaded very slowly in the presence of 1.2.6. The problem was that code added in 1.2.6 had not been optimized for performance due to the need to deal with the T4 virus as quickly as possible. While the performance effects of this unoptimized code were not limited to After Dark, it only seems to have been obvious there for reasons that aren't especially clear. Ą A conflict with version 4.0 of the Apple CD-ROM driver. Ą A conflict with MediaManager. Lots of other bugs are history, too, but it'd take too long to sort through all the old bug reports and put together a list. Basically, 1.2.7 is just a heck of lot smarter and more stable (if the last six months of testing can be trusted) than 1.2.6. If it hadn't taken six and a half months and twelve test versions to track down a few weird bugs in 1.2.7, it would have been released months ago. One new feature has been added: Gatekeeper will now resolve aliases to its "Gatekeeper Prefs" and "Gatekeeper Log" files if the names of the aliases are *identical* to the names of the files they represent. An alias named "Gatekeeper Prefs alias" won't work, for instance. This feature may possibly be useful to people configuring Macs with read-only System Folders, as it allows the Prefs and Log files to be stored in other locations that are can be accessed in a read/write fashion. The release notes for previous versions are included below for your amusement. They are no longer of any importance at all. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.6 Release Notes 9-Jul-92 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.6 began as a simple maintenance release intended to correct a few bugs in 1.2.5. Unfortunately, the appearance of the T4 virus required the sudden addition of a lot of code heretofore scheduled to debut in version 1.3. Although only a little of this code was required to deal with T4, it was all so interrelated that it made sense to add the entire body of code at the same time. This code gives Gatekeeper a much better idea of "who's who" in the Mac, and should make it possible to grant privileges to programs (especially those loaded by INITs) that could not be identified properly by previous versions. While 1.2.6 was still in testing, a new and destructive Trojan Horse program aslo appeared. Gatekeeper Aid was updated to search for this program. Aid will warn you anytime it encounters this program. While all this was going on, a little time was found on a couple of already late nights to add a much requested feature: an OFF switch with a user-configurable time limit. Previous versions of Gatekeeper have only supported a 30 minute time limit on the OFF switch (once known as the Override switch). Version 1.2.6 allows you to choose any time limit from 99:59:59 to as little as 0:00:00 HMS . With a maximum time limit of just over four days, there should be time enough to install even Microsoft Word 5. :-) Finally, a couple of bugs in version 1.2.5 were found and fixed. The most important of these bugs was one which caused all of Gatekeeper's settings, including the contents of the privilege list, to revert to their defaults after a couple of new privileges were added to the privilege list and the system was rebooted. [ HMS means "Hours, Minutes, Seconds" and refers to the significance of the three colon-separated fields of the times displayed. The first field is hours, the second is minutes andÉ well, you get the idea.] --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.5 Release Notes 19-Mar-92 --------------------------------------------------- The primary reason for the release of Gatekeeper 1.2.5 is the INIT 1984 virus. This version includes an updated Gatekeeper Aid which can detect and remove that virus on the fly. Previous versions of Gatekeeper could prevent the spread of INIT 1984, but could not disinfect infected files. Version 1.2.5 also contains a fix for the bug that caused THINK Pascal's debugger to complain of system heap corruption. This is likely to resolve some of the reported conflicts between Gatekeeper and other publisher's products. Thanks to whomever implemented the excellent heap consistency checking code in THINK Pascal's debugger for bringing this problem to light. Finally, version 1.2.5 should include a complete set of workarounds for the conflict between AutoDoubler and Gatekeeper. Although the products do work together now, some performance problems may exist when launching compressed applications. Yes, this can be annoying, but remember that AutoDoubler is *commercial* software, so you have to make allowances for these sorts of troubles.... ;-) --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.4 Release Notes 20-Feb-92 --------------------------------------------------- The primary reason for the release of Gatekeeper 1.2.4 was the MBDF A virus. This version includes an updated Gatekeeper Aid which can detect and remove the MBDF A virus on the fly. Version 1.2.4 should also, at last, include a complete set of workarounds for System 7 Tuner's mischief. In addition it includes workarounds that may eliminate the conflict between AutoDoubler and Gatekeeper, although there wasn't enough time prior to release to test this thoroughly. In any case, it's an improvement over 1.2.3 in this respect. WARNING: If you use THINK Pascal, see the NOTE TO THINK PASCAL USERS included in the Gatekeeper 1.2.2 section below. It should still apply. In an effort to resolve the problem mentioned there, I have been in touch with some people in the THINK portion of Symantec, but until they get back to me, things are at a standstill. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.3 Release Notes 27-Jan-92 --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.3 corrects two stupid oversights found in 1.2.2. One involved the display of entries in the Gatekeeper Log which dealt with resource privilege violations (the format for file violations was used inadvertently), and the other involved an internal table which believed it was shorter than it actually was. Nothing else has changed since 1.2.2. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.2 Release Notes 21-Jan-92 --------------------------------------------------- The primary purpose of version 1.2.2 is to correct problems that prevented Gatekeeper 1.2 and 1.2.1 from loading during startup. Those problems resulted in Gatekeeper and/or Gatekeeper Aid crashing, refusing to load during startup, or incorrectly drawing their startup icons. Unlike version 1.2.1, which was also intended to fix this problem, version 1.2.2 actually *does* fix it (had to happen sooner or later ;-). IMPORTANT NOTE TO THINK PASCAL USERS: --------------------------------------------------- Two Gatekeeper 1.2.2 testers reported that, with 1.2.2 installed on their Macs, the THINK Pascal debugger would complain that the system heap was corrupt. In both cases, examination of the system heap with the low-level MacsBug and TMON debuggers revealed NO corruption present, so I am forced to suspect that the THINK Pascal debugger is incorrect in its diagnosis. Testing using MacsBug on other systems also failed to find any case in which Gatekeeper 1.2.2 was corrupting the system heap. In addition, the TMON user noted that after using TMON to check the system heap integrity once, the THINK Pascal debugger would also give the system heap a clean bill of health. --------------------------------------------------- Some (but not all) of the other changes and fixes include: Ą Version 1.2.2 includes a workaround for Apple's System 7 Tune-Up problem. This workaround eliminates the need for the Finder to be granted Res(Self) privileges. If you have granted those privileges, please revoke them once you've installed 1.2.2. Note that this was (and is) a problem with Apple's Tune-Up widget; it was NOT a problem with Gatekeeper. Ą Gatekeeper Aid now records its activities in the Gatekeeper Log. Ą Gatekeeper records more of its own activities in the log. This includes changes to everything in the "Settings" section of Gatekeeper Controls except for the Startup Icon setting, which I regard as unimportant. Ą Gatekeeper Aid now respects Gatekeeper's ON/OFF, "Notify & Veto"/"Notify Only", "Display an Alert", "Record it in the Log File" and "Startup Icon" settings. If Gatekeeper is OFF or in Notify Only mode, 'Aid will NOT remove any implied loader resources it detects, although it WILL remove any known viruses (or their close relatives) that it finds. Strictly speaking, this isn't really what "OFF" implies to users, but it seemed silly for 'Aid to overlook things it KNOWS are viruses under any circumstances. Input on this point is welcome. If Gatekeeper's "Display an Alert" option is off, 'Aid won't display its alerts, either. The same goes for the "Record it in the Log File" and "Startup Icon" settings. Ą Gatekeeper Controls and Gatekeeper Privilege Mover will no longer crash pre-7 Macs if the Control Panel DA is opened when Gatekeeper is NOT installed. Ą Gatekeeper 1.2.2 protects some additional toolbox functions and resource types which could heretofore have been exploited by viruses. Ą Gatekeeper used to give some people trouble by failing to identify the applications performing certain privileged operations. Instead, it would blame the operations on an application whose name was a string of gibberish. This was caused by an obscure, unitialized boolean variable and has been fixed. Ą Gatekeeper Aid is no longer confused by Desktop files outside of the root directories of volumes. Ą Gatekeeper Controls should now work on Quadras. The code resource segmentation scheme employed in THINK C 4.x was responsible for the incompatibility. Since Gatekeeper 1.2.2 has been built entirely under THINK C 5.0.2, the problem is history. Ą If, during startup, Gatekeeper finds that there is no Gatekeeper Prefs file, it will create one containing a complete default privilege list. (Gatekeeper used to create a new Prefs file containing an *empty* privilege list Đ this caused some folks who didn't follow the installation instructions some problems.) Ą Self extracting archives (SEAs) created by the soon-to-be-released Zoom archiver will automatically get the File(Other) privileges they need. Gatekeeper already provides this privilege to SEAs created by StuffIt (Classic and Deluxe), Compact Pro and Disk Doubler. Ą Gatekeeper Controls now has a flexible system for translating log file entries into readable alerts, based on easily edited resources. This may be of use to people trying to internationalize Gatekeeper. Ą The Gatekeeper, 'Aid, 'Controls and 'Privilege Mover icons have been updated in System 7 style, i.e. the icons for the INITs look like puzzle-pieces, and the icons for the cdevs have little slider controls running down their left sides. Note that in order to see all these new icons, you'll need to remove *all* previous versions of Gatekeeper from your disk(s) and rebuild your desktop file(s). Ą The "puzzle-piece" icons for Gatekeeper and Gatekeeper Aid will appear connected on the startup screen if the icons would otherwise be adjacent. This is of no practical value whatever, but it is kinda cute. --------------------------------------------------- Gatekeeper 1.2.1 Release Notes 4-Jul-91 --------------------------------------------------- (This release contained some fixes and enhancements over version 1.2, but my records don't go back far enough to tell me what they were anymore.) Chris Johnson Internet: chrisj@emx.cc.utexas.edu UUCP: {husc6|uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!chrisj BITNET: chrisj@utxvm.bitnet CompuServe: >INTERNET:chrisj@emx.cc.utexas.edu AppleLink: chrisj@emx.cc.utexas.edu@internet#