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From: delann@cs.umu.se (Anders Nyman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: MacSE, keeping out viruses
Message-ID: <1991Feb10.024013.3677@cs.umu.se>
Date: 10 Feb 91 02:40:13 GMT
References: <12110.27B0A6C6@fidogate.FIDONET.ORG> <58898@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
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Organization: Dep. of Info.Proc, Umea Univ., Sweden
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In article <58898@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> seanhull@acsu.buffalo.edu (Sean P. Hull) writes:
>Hello-
>     I have a MAC SE, with 20Meg harddrive.  It is running SAM
>intercept, which catches some kinds of viruses, but not all.  Recently
>the harddrive became infected again, by some unknown user.  This mac
>has a fairly small user population, but viruses still keep creeping
>up.  
>     Most of the use for the harddrive is for the applications which
>are already on it, that is rarely would anyone need to write to the
>harddrive.  
>     What I would like to do it make writing to the harddrive require
>a password.  Since most everything a user could need is on the
>harddrive already, I don't THINK this should be a problem.  If the
>user wants to edit one of THEIR files in say MACWRITE, it would read
>from THEIR disk, and write to THEIR disk, without writing to the
>harddrive (hopefully).  Now, I realise there IS a clipboard, but as
>far as I can tell, this is resident in memory, and does not REALLY
>have to be SAVED to the harddrive periodically.   Perhaps I am wrong
>on this point.  (Theoretically it could be implemented this way)
>
>     Is the above possible?  If it is, how is it done?  What are the
>sideaffects, if any to this solution?  Are there other solutions to
>keeping ALL viruses off the harddrive?
>

Maybe you should try out GateKeeper as virusprotection. Maybe it will catch
the virus witch SAM doesn't. I haven't used SAM myself and can't say if it
will work.

As long as you doesn't have to change your applications and systemfiles you 
also could try to lock the files. I think this would stop virusinfections.
Virus witch infects the Desktop file will not be stopped since locking the
desktop file wouldn't be such a great idea, but all virus which are attacking
applications and finder/system-files would be stopped.

Anders Nyman