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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: <0004.9104241322.AA17334@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 23 Apr 91 18:33:12 GMT
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>From:    jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)

>What I really should have pointed out is that computer viruses wouldn't
>be a serious problem if the commonly-used operating systems had even
>some decent protection mechanisms provided by the operating system.

Exactly. MS-DOS has zero integrity checking and access control. This includes
the beta and release 5.00 versions. However, wishing for something different
(like unix) is not going to help the bulk of the people. Controls can be added
(after all, a PC is a fully functioning computer before DOS is loaded), but to
do so while allowing the incredible installed base of MS-DOS applications to
run (not to mention some of the odder BIUOSes) as users expect is somewhat more
difficult. Until MicroSoft decides to ad at least minimal integrity checking
to the OS, life will remain difficult (but not impossible).

>I have source source code to every program I run on my
>home system and every part of the system, even the ROM monitor and the
>PCB.

Really ? Where do you find room for it ? Just my 386 BIOS is nearly a meg and
a half of ASCII (20,000+ lines) and is less than 64k of binaries. I shudder
to think how big the 4+ Mb of WordStar 5.5 would be.