Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!polyslo!vlsi3b15!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: CXT105@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Christopher Tate) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Idea for WDEF Innoculation (Mac) Message-ID: <0009.9002121947.AA15751@ge.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 12 Feb 90 01:35:44 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 38 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu jg3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jason Ari Goldstein) says: >I don't know much about Macs (Being a PC person) but if I understand >correctly every time the disk is inserted the they Virus is sread to >the disk. Well, why doesn't someone write an innoculation directly >based on the virus itself. Everytime a disk is inserted in the drive >it would be checked for infection if so it would remove WDEF if not it >would then 'innoculate the disk' with itself. Eventually, WDEF would >be wiped out the same way it was spread initially. > >The only problem with this is that it is a virus also, but with the >proper prompts (allowing the user the choice of being innoculated) I >don't think this would be a problem. I know I would mind not ever >being infected by a virus that kills other viruses. > >In the mean time, about 75% of the time I in a cluster I remove WDEF A >or B from either a hard disk or someone elses floppies. The big problem with this is that since the WDEF-removal code is itself a virus, it stands a big chance of causing the same problems as any other virus -- crashes due to poorly written code. There have been no viruses written to date for the Macintosh which deliberately cause damage to the system (*). All of the problems caused by existing viruses are in fact the result of bugs in the viruses, which causes interference with other programs under certain circumstances. Since the above-mentioned inoculation program would be a virus itself, it might well cause problems itself. (*) Mosaic and Font Finder are not viruses (they do not replicate), but are instead "trojan horses" -- destructive code hidden within an innocuous-seeming program. - ------- Christopher Tate | cxt105@psuvm.bitnet | nobody, not even the rain, cxt105@psuvm.psu.edu | has such small hands. ..!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!cxt105 |