Brown and White Vol. 99 no. 30

              lehigh is not the only university that has recently been afflicted by an outbreak of a computer virus george washington university the university of delaware and the university of pittsburgh have all been affected by similar viruses according to kevin weiner systems programming manager at lehigh's computing center the university does not know who started lehigh's virus and declined to speculate on how it may have started he also reftised to comment on measures lehigh is taking to combat the virus for fear of giving anyone an advantage in introducing a new one the virus affecting the other three schools was started by a 19 year-old college student basit farooq alvi in lahore pakist an alvi supposedly started the virus in 1986 with his brother amjad for fun a message with alvi's name address and telephone number appear in the computer code welcoming users to the dungeon and telling them to beware of the virus the message also tells users to contact alvi for the cure but so far no one has lehigh's virus is more destructive than the palestinian one which only affects floppy disks lehigh's can destroy both floppy and hard disks which contain more programs and much more data than floppys do there are various ways to defend against computer viruses but probably the best is to make back-up copies of all data on disks that do not have ms-dos or pc-dos operating systems on them bymarygreczyn brown and white news editor messages were sent to hundreds of lehigh computer network users between 8 and 9:30 p.m tuesday from an account that was illegal ly accessed by an unknown third party said kevin weiner systems programming manager at the computing center the incident occurred following reports the center began receiving last friday from users who discovered their passwords were stolen he said there is no way of knowing how many accounts were involved in this incident all users were notified of both situations through the network server weiner said the owner of the account through which tuesday's messages were sent is in no way responsible for them how this person got onto this account is not known he added refusing to speculate on the site from which the messages were sent for fear of hampering a pending investion although weiner said he does not know if both situations are related he commented that person implied in a message that he may also be the one who had run the password the brown and white v01.98 n0.30 lehigh university bethlehem pennsylvania the brown and white friday february 26 1988 arts college names dean 215 758-4-181 attended stanford university where he earn ed a doctorate in physics he was also an honorary woodrow wilson fellow and a stan ford research fellow he is a member of the american physical society sigma xi honarary society and the institute of electrical and electronics engine ers he also has participated in several nation al committees and panels primarily devoted to computational mathmatics supercomput ing and materials science james gunton professor of physics and director of the center for computational sci ence at temple university has been named dean of lehigh's college of arts and science the appointment effective july 1 was announced wednesday by provost david sanchez professor gunton was one of four finalists presented to me by the search committee who did a superb job of recruiting qualified candid ates for the position sanchez said i'm confident jim will be an outstanding dean sanchez said he has a strong appreciation for the arts humanities and social sciences and he recognizes the potential of the college he has a good sense of faculty as well as a good sense of humor gunton currently directs a 2 million super computer system at temple a smaller version of the system at cornell which makes possible parallel processing the solution of many complex problems simultaneously gunton will be heading the largest of the university's three undergraduate colleges which is comprised of 191 faculty members or 49 percent of all full-time faculty and approx imately 1,800 students or 40 percent of under graduate enrollment a member of temple faculty since 1970 gunton served on a presidential committee on the future of temple a long-range planning effort for the university he also has extensive budgetary experience at the college and uni versitv level gunton received a bachelor's degree with highest honors at linfield college oregon and received a rhodes scholarship upon receiving a bachelor's degree in physics at oxford he was named a danforth fellow and candidates previewed as election draws near by vera evans brown and white news writer editor's note the brown and white's survey on political awareness conducted earlier this month showed that many lehigh students surveyed were not familiar with the candidates in the 1988 presidential campaign the following is an overview of all democratic and republican candidates and their stances on major issues republicans george bush as vice president of the united states since 1980 bush has acquired substantial practical experi ence prior to his vice presidency he was director of the central intelligence agency cia chief of the u.s liason office in the people's republic of china republican national chairman united nations ambassador and u.s congressman from texas bush strongly supports reducing strategic arms and the intermediate nuclear forces inf treaty to eliminate intermediate and short-range nuclear weapons he wants thorough strategic defense initiative sdi research as well bush advocates further aid to the contras in nicaragua and has little faith that the nicaraguan leaders will allow lasting reforms to come about bush wants a balanced budget amendment but has not specified exactly how he would accomplish this he is adamantly against raising taxes and supports spending cuts instead in regard to the acquired immune deficiency syndrome aids issue bush favors voluntary premarital testing and mandatory testing of prisoners and immigrants he thinks aids education is a local matter and will not take a position on the national academy of sciences nas proposed federal funding of aids research and prevention robert dole was last in the limelight when he ran for vice president in 1976 with gerald ford before that he was see candidates page 4 computer bug swatted larger foe looms password theft new ailment virus in remission program established last week psychology teaching assistant john bitzer said the messages were all sent with his password which he suspects was stolen according to bitzer since then he has received at least 250 messages through the network and threatening phone calls day and night from disgruntled message recipients of course people read my name from bitzer and assumed it was me he explained weiner said there were 8 different versions of the messages which ranged from funny to abusive and obscene bitzer described one message he knew of that was sent to a female student asking her abouta movie date in turn he said he received a message from one woman's boyfriend who was upset because she had been sent a message from bitzer's account but he said a few network users after being notified of the situation have sent apologies to him through the network server campus police are conducting an investiga tion and have informed the bethlehem police and pennsylvania state police who are serving in advisory capacities by brian briggs brown and white news writer opi photo james gunton