Glenn wrote yesterday:

> c|net's NEWS.COM is reporting on a "back door" vulnerability
>  for those sites designed using MS Front Page:
>
>     Microsoft said its engineers included a secret back door including
>     the phrase "Netscape engineers are weenies!" in Web site authoring
>     software that could allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to
>     potentially thousands of Web sites.

Today, Netscape shot back:

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April 15, 2000

Microsoft Investigates 'Weenie' Security Flaw in Internet Software

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE -- Despite what some Microsoft Corp. programmers might think,
Netscape Communications Corp. says its engineers are not "weenies."
That blanket denial was issued Friday after a relic of the heated war between
Netscape and Microsoft popped up in a security flaw in some Microsoft
software.

Scott Culp, a manager for Microsoft's security response team, said the
company found that a 5-year-old piece of code in FrontPage 98 -- a software
tool used to create pages to publish on the World Wide Web -- inadvertently
gave FrontPage users access to multiple Web site pages housed on the same
server computer.

The piece of code in question also contained the phrase: "Netscape engineers
are weenies!"

The phrase acts as a kind of password for the Web pages, requiring the user
to know the phrase in order to gain access.

That's "classic Microsoft arrogance," said Catherine Corre, a spokeswoman for
Netscape, now an America Online Inc. subsidiary. Her company's engineers, she
added, "certainly are not weenies."

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Wirt Atmar