Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wugate!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!agate!ucbvax!DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL!TMPLee
From: TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: resources and viruses
Message-ID: <890721163707.944460@DOCKMASTER.ARPA>
Date: 21 Jul 89 16:37:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28

I think it was Dave Lyons who said something like IIGS people had better
things to do with their time than write viruses; would that were true,
but it only takes one.

My real reason for writing:  I know very little about Macs (but will
learn soon -- my oldest is about to go off to U.  Wisc and is insisting
on buying a new computer; they only sell Macs and PS/2's -- no question
which it will be, just how much money I think I can spare), but my
understanding is that their apparent extreme vulnerability to viruses is
that resource forks can contain code and that it is very easy to add
forks to an application or file that get automatically executed.

Now, my understanding may be wrong, so let me ask the question in a more
direct manner:  can I have a resource fork associated with what I think
is a data file that actually contains code and is executed without my
knowing it?  the INIT's in the system folder don't bother me, since I
get those from Apple.  Is it the case, for instance, that I could, say,
have a resource fork associated with a WordPerfect document (file type
$A0) that automatically gets executed as code every time the file gets
opened?  I sure hope not, but somehow I wonder.  At present the only
code I ever run is code of known provenence -- with resource forks will
that continue to be true?  (The few times I've used something off a
bulletin board I shut the system down and turned off the hard drive,
copying the NON-CODE output to a floppy before powering down and
re-booting.  Icons are only data, not code, so no worry.)  What scares
me is the notion that someone will ship around purportedly useful text
or graphics but have associated with it code in a resource fork that
contains a virus.  Can that be done or not?