Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!tut!santra!clinet!msa
From: msa@clinet.FI (Markku Savela)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Trojan Horse a Myth?
Message-ID: <558@clinet.FI>
Date: 22 Dec 87 21:58:45 GMT
References: <459@gtx.com> <2393@killer.UUCP> <337@spectrix.UUCP> <1931@utx1.UUCP>
Reply-To: msa@clinet.UUCP (Markku Savela)
Organization: City Lines Oy, Helsinki, Finland
Lines: 30
Summary: Virus programs don't thrive on a good OS

In article <1931@utx1.UUCP> ashley@utx1.UUCP (Ashley Oliver) writes:
>In article <337@spectrix.UUCP>, clewis@spectrix.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:
>> 
>> A minor quibble - have you ever used PC/MSDOS?  It's very simple to
>> break security on these machines because there ain't none.  Many BBS's
>....
>but I'd claim MS-DOS is a lot more secure than UNIX on the simple
>grounds that any single user/single tasking OS is inherently several
>orders of magnitude more secure than any multi user/multi tasking OS.

     Let's assume you get into hands a highly useful program in
executable form for your favorite operating system/machine. The
quetions is: under which operating systems you can run the program
in standard environment and secure in knowledge, that it can do
no harm?

     PC/MSDOS is surely not secure in this respect. You have no way
of protecting anything in your machine. And even if you test it in a
empty system, perhaps you should format the disks and power down the
machine afterwards. Just to purge all possible hiding places for
virus programs...

    On the other hand, under properly configured multiuser operating
system a virus program has no chance to infect anything. Now, after
the big VMS Security Hole has been plugged (?), I think VMS passes
this "virus test" clearly. I don't know Unix enough to say anything
about that.

--
Markku Savela,  UUCP: msa@clinet.fi