Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Ordania-DM
From: Ordania-DM@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: Atari 8-bit viruses
Message-ID: <8930@cup.portal.com>
Date: 10 Sep 88 05:21:05 GMT
References: <8809081639.AA19101@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <1336@nunki.usc.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 19
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.5273


   Atari 8 bit viruses, etc.  I am a pretty good programmer, and I can assure 
you that an 8 bit boot virus would be very easy to write for the Atari DOSes.
 Writing one for the SpartaDOS series would be more difficult but still not 
hard for a competent programmer.
  I haven't seen any, and hopefully I never will.  I have thought about them
and have come to the conclusion that a multivirus (one that infects Boots, Com
programs, and Basic programs) is quite possible.  It would require an 
excellent programmer and some time but would be relatively easy to write.
 Luckily, those quality programmers are usually in the process of writing 
other (more useful) programs.
  In talking with others (when the virus question first came up) I found that
the ways to activate a virus were moe numerous than the people I talked to.
 Each one of them had 2-3 nasty thoughts on how to cause a virus to activate
and how to create strange viruses.
  I shall end by saying that should any of these ideas be applied to other 
computers, they could effectively prevent the tracing of a virus to its source
which (as far as I am concerned) is of greater importance than eliminating the
virus in the first place.