Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!polyslo!vlsi3b15!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: ficc!peter@uunet.uu.net Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Why not change OS? Message-ID: <0006.8910062006.AA22699@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 6 Oct 89 01:35:04 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 37 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu time@oxtrap.aa.ox.com (Tim Endres) writes: > Better than changing OS to get better virus "resistance", why not > encourage the systems designers at Apple and IBM to implement > protection in their respective operating systems? I don't know about the Mac... its system software is a lot cleaner than Messy-DOS, albeit rather unconventional. But this is pretty much impossible with MS-DOS. I suspect you would have to write a complete new operating system with an MS-DOS emulator. The reason for this is that the original MS-DOS was so incompetant (for example, the serial driver code never worked right for anything better than dumping to a printer, and it's never been fixed) that any decent program was forced to go direct to the hardware. And of course if you're going to go to a new O/S, why not use an off-the-shelf one that's already achieved wide acceptance? I once sat down and tried to write a terminal emulator that was entirely well-behaved. I was able to keep up with 1200 baud using the XT bios to put stuff on the screen, by heavy use of curses-style heuristics, but I broke down and went straight to the serial port. Of course, OS/2 is supposed to fix all this. For some bizzarre reason, though, it's still got no security features. Anyway, the reason Apple and IBM aren't doing anything is because there's no great call from the user community to do anything, and nobody's willing to consider a better alternative if it means risking their cherished soft- ware investment. Which is only reasonable, but there's no reason new installations can't be based on something like UNIX. - --- Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun:peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' ``I feel that any [environment] with users in it is "adverse".''