The Virus

Sulaiman:
>TL 7 80286 with DOS 3.3 then I can see the virus possibly working. ALso the
>new designer seem to have little or now idea of computer networks and
>distributed systems. Servers are very hard to infect with anything. Systems
 ...omitted...
>I still don't buy the virus idea. The type of virus that now exists is at
>its heart exactly like viruses going around infecting standalone PCs. But
>generally they are easily found out if you keep good backups and compare
>file sizes often enough.

        You are not up on some of the nastier new "stealth" virii, are you?
Michelangelo, for example, does not attach itself to files or do anything
to file size...

>The activities of the virus are realisable only
>if there are no networks in the Imperium. Real networks with a large
>server/mainframe at center and connected processing units, not network
>in the communication network sense as say internet.

        I don't follow this at all.  Perhaps you could explain?  It seems to
me that "real networks" (mass storage sharing, distributed computing) make
the spread of a virus far easier and eradicating it far hairier a job.

>Generally a TL15 equivalent of the FORMAT drive command should take care
>of Mr big nasty virus.

        Over on the tne-pocket echo we had a prolonged discussion of the
Virus, and what forms it might take.  If one extrapolates the current trend
in reprogrammable hardware (PLA, PAL, etc) to its logical extreme, and
assume that by the Imperial era, all high-tech computers consist of
self-configuring hardware that loads a "program" by rewiring its own logic...
Such a technology is tailor-made for the Virus as described.
        As it is, in the real world (tm), I shudder to think what is going
to happen when some malicious soul writes a virus that hooks into Flash BIOS.
There are gonna be a lot of unhappy customers with dead 486 boxes and trashed
disks...
(Making your BIOS rewritable is a really stupid security hole... not that DOS
has any security whatsoever.)
        BTW, I sensibly assume that Impy computers have some built-in security
provisions to keep any hacker from telling your main defense computer to
reconfigure itself into 3000 microwave oven controllers.. but one of the
major threats of the Virus is that it is the ultimate hacker, and
knowledge of how to crack a given system type is inherited by its children.
                                        -- Cynthia

p.s. FORMAT won't remove Michelangelo from an infected system. :-)