Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:12391 news.sysadmin:1441
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: safe testing of infectious agents
Message-ID: <1988Nov14.175253.26468@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1460@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> <11029@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <17827@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <32440@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 17:52:53 GMT

In article <32440@oliveb.olivetti.com> jerry@olivey.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes:
>>>How does one debug a virus?
>>     On an isolated network of machines, obviously.  
>There are simpler ways than dedicating a group of systems and the
>network connecting them.  The most obvious is to criple the virus (or
>worm) so it can't live on normal systems...

Ah, but this brings us back to the Morris-Jr Fallacy:  "of course it won't
cause any real trouble, I wrote it not to".  Debugging on an isolated
network protects the rest of the world from your mistakes as well as your
deliberate experiments.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu