Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!polya!rokicki
From: rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The ultimate fix!!!
Message-ID: <3973@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 14 Sep 88 21:39:50 GMT
References: <681@zehntel.UUCP> <3084@hermes.ai.mit.edu> <4197@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 16

In article <4197@thorin.cs.unc.edu>, bell@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) writes:
> The "checksum" could be made a rather intricate calculation,

Most `more complicated' boot block checksums could easily be
reverse-engineered.  No, you'd want to allocate 128 bits to
the `check' field, at least, and use RSA public-key magic to
make it impossible for anyone but Commodore to make a boot
block.  (Commodore would supply check fields for commercial
boot blocks via the commercial developers program.)  Even
this wouldn't be sufficient, though, because a virus could
hitch a ride off someone's boot block that read and executed
code directly off the disk, or some such.  Folks, there is no
point to challenging the virus writers, as Jimm says.  Best
to ignore the problem.  But the RSA idea would be kind of
neat.

-tom