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From: pjc@sirius.melb.bull.oz.au (Paul Carapetis)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: Viruses in Sound Effects (Mac)
Message-ID: <0003.9009271833.AA25485@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 13:40:52 GMT
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Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

Alexis Rosen said:

> The assertion that you should check everything is fairly decent advice
> for beginners, but there are definitely many types of files that will
> remain forever uninfectable. (That is, with a healthy contagious
> virus.) In general, these are data files which don't contain
> information which is interpreted as anything like instruction
> sequences by a fairly generic command processor.  Yes, I know that
> that's a pretty vague definition, but it's pretty accurate too for all
> of that.

It is my belief that any file on the mac which is capable of
displaying itself as an icon has executable code to do so.  If this is
true, then ANY file is open to infection by a virus designed to take
advantage of this.

Of course, it is very possible that I have been mis-informed and the
above premise is totally incorrect, in which case, I apologise in
advance.

Any comments from knowledgable mac users?

Blueskies,

| Paul Carapetis, Software Advisor (Unix, DOS)  |   Phone: 61 3 4200944   |
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