Pledge Regarding Computer Viruses:
I agree that I and my organization:
- Will not write computer viruses or modify existing viruses, for any purpose including "test" purposes and will not approve or otherwise condone such activities by my employees or peers.
- Will not write or publish papers, books or articles containing significant parts of computer virus code, how-to information, or significant information designed to be used to create viruses.
- Will not endorse or otherwise support public access "virus bulletin boards" or other shared media or data services that intentionally distribute computer viruses or knowingly allow, endorse or promote such distribution.
- Will not sell, give, loan, or knowingly allow to transfer, viruses, virus code, or computer virus source code to customers, potential customers, the press, colleagues or others for any purpose including testing purposes except as described in "Conditions of Authorized Virus Exchange" at the end of this documents.
- Will support, and encourage the development of legislation that I believe will tend to decrease the global virus problem.
- To the extent of my abilities, I will cooperate with any legal, or other authoritative investigation or prosecution of a computer virus author or organization which creates, intentionally modifies, sells or intentionally distributes or allows to distribute computer viruses (other than for the purposes explicitly provided for in "Conditions of Authorized Virus Exchange" below).
- Will strive to provide accurate, timely information about and will never intentionally mislead, deceive, or delude any person, public, press, or potential buyer about computer virus issues including: individual virus characteristics, properties, prevalence or virus incident case histories.
Enforcement:
- I agree to abide by this code of ethics and to educate other employees, independent contractors and applicable consultants to this organization about it.
- I understand that violations of this code of ethics, after reasonable investigation, may result in disciplinary action against the responsible individual(s) including possible loss of employment with company
Conditions of Authorized Virus Exchange:
Recognizing that company provides Anti-Virus and other Security products and services:
- Certain specified individuals who are expressly authorized by the Security Product Manager of company may give, receive or exchange viruses or virus source code with other bona fide virus researchers and anti-virus product developers, whose trustworthiness has been established by experience or analysis, provided that this activity is performed in the full light of public knowledge and is well supervised, monitored, and logged.
- Each and every instance of such virus exchange will be logged. All logs of such activity will be maintained by the individual performing the virus exchanges and will be made available on a timely basis to the Anti-Virus or Security Product Manager and the Virus Lab Manager.
- All viruses involved in such exchange shall be transferred in a non-functional, encrypted format.
- The intended recipient(s) of the computer viruses must be informed prior to the transfer and must understand that the transfer of viruses to them or their organization may be publicly available information.
- The recipient of any computer viruses or virus source code, must agree to abide by this or a similar code of ethics.