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From: padgett%tccslr.dnet@uvs1.orl.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: AF/91 and April Foolism in general
Message-ID: <0005.9104231715.AA16173@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 22 Apr 91 17:07:35 GMT
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>From:    dank@stealth.usc.edu (Dan King)
>Viruses are a problem.  A big one.  Are they're going to get worse.
>Come on, don't pick on the users.  Attack, instead, the virus authors.

The real problem is that MS-DOS, like the Mac OS, has NO integrity
checking and that viruses are remarkably easy to write. It would be
easy to legislate viruses out of existance except that it is difficult
to arrest a virus. Laws are only effective as a remedy after the fact,
most people are more concerned with not being infected in the firstc
place.

>From:    keir@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Rick Keir, MACC)
>You HAVE to be vigilant because there are many REAL viruses out there.

This is the only effective procedure. If it places too heavy a burden
on the users than it is up to technology to determine an acceptable
solution. As in many areas of social intercourse, nothing is no longer
acceptable.

From one standpoint, we have been very lucky to have been stuck by so
many inept and essentially benign viruses over the last few years.
This has given up an effective learning period where ignorance was
both the norm and curable.  Today, things are quite different. The
writers of viruses have been learning at the same time we have and
Windows/DOS 5 provide more opportunities for intrusion (actually many
of these "holes" have existed since DOS 3.0 in 1984, jut had not been
exploited).

To those who have been paying attention, it should be obvious that
protection layered on to of DOS is no longer sufficient, integrity
management must (and can easily) start at the BIOS level. The fact
that so many current viruses do so (Stoned, Joshi, MusicBug, Empire,
etc) should be evidence enough.