Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!vtserf!creatures!davism
From: davism@creatures.cs.vt.edu (Mat Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Mac OS Viruses under A/UX 2.0
Summary: Can A/UX protections stop viruses?
Message-ID: <402@creatures.cs.vt.edu>
Date: 30 May 90 14:04:15 GMT
Sender: usenet@creatures.cs.vt.edu
Reply-To: davism@vtopus.cs.vt.edu (Mat Davis)
Distribution: comp.unix.aux
Organization: Virginia Tech Computer Science, Blacksburg, VA
Lines: 15

In the fall, we plan to put A/UX 2.0 on ten lab machines and we'd like to
allow users to run the Mac environment if they like.  Has anyone experimented
with viruses under 2.0?  I'm hoping that if we set the machines up correctly
A/UX will be able to prevent a virus from infecting them, but I don't have
copies of any viruses to try.

It seems as if the normal Unix protections should stop the viruses, but the
Mac Toolbox appears to have at least *some* special privileges (such as being
exempt from the "10% free" limit on ufs filesystems) and that leads me to
wonder if that would weaken the protections.

As a last resort, we *could* create a new, clean system folder each time the
'guest' user logs in, but that will slow the login process considerably.

	Mat