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From: krvw@sei.cmu.edu (Kenneth van Wyk)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: virus sociology
Message-ID: <0001.8907261137.AA08543@ge.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 25 Jul 89 12:47:21 GMT
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In article virus sociology of 21 Jul 89 20:10:28 GMT
mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) writes:

>     The question is: can we speculate that many, if not most, of this
>scum reads (and perhaps participates) in this newsgroup?  Isn't the
>effort of cataloging all the viri egging the scum on to greater
>efforts?

I suppose that it's possible to find a pessimistic outlook on just
about everything...  The flip side of it is that we're getting
valuable information out to people who really need it to understand
(hence cope with) the virus problem.  I think that positive side
outweighs any negative side.

>     The next question is: how much effort should we be putting into
>getting the vendors of various machines and operating systems to
>design their software to be virus-proof as opposed to writing new
>virus detectors/fixers?  Let's face it, the current generation of
>personal computers have non-existant security not only from viri but
>also from user screwups.

Newer machines are already being equipped with features, such as
hardware memory protection, privileged i/o instructions, etc., that
can help in preventing viruses.  It's still up to the operating system
software to properly use the available hardware.  To that end, I
believe that it is worthwhile for customers to push vendors to supply
more secure and thoroughly tested hardware and software.

Ken