Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!mailrus!eecae!cps3xx!rang
From: rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: The virus (worm): what if...
Message-ID: <1034@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 88 19:16:43 GMT
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Organization: Michigan State University, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 18

Just out of curiousity, does anyone have any idea how long it would
have taken to detect/analyze the virus if it had actually been
malignant?  Say, deleting '/bin/login' and '/usr/spool/log/syslog' (or
all the files on the machine).
  If your machine just stops responding, and you can't log in, and the
only thing you can do is reboot it (at which point you discover that
'/vmunix' is missing), how do you know what's happened?  How long
would it take before people realized it was a general problem?
  And how long would it have been before the worm had been analyzed
enough to block it?

  We should be GLAD that Mr. Morris didn't do anything nasty (whether
he planned to eventually or not)....

+---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | "UNIX: Just Say No!"   | "Do worry...be SAD!" |
| Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu |                      |
+---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+