Re: The Virus

Cynthia writes:

>        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.

Such a technology still requires the virus to convince that computer that
what it just received was really a program not the data that was expected.
Current computers distinguish between the two (well some small ones
don't turn the protection on even if they ought to).

The description of how the virus propogates may work for high TL computers
(I don't know how a TL15 computers works so I cannot comment on it) but
it will not work on lowly TL8 computers without the virus physically altering
the circuits which requires physical contact or at least close proximity to
a large enough silicon area.

I'm quite happy to make the claim that low TL computers are going to be
highly virus resistant.  And I'm willing to extend this claim another TL.
Moreover, once the virus is discovered it is quite a simple proposition
to design computers that are immune to it.  Don't make the computer physically
accessable (large locked box?) and treat all incoming data with caution (and
isolate these inputs).

Even if re-programmable logic is being extensively used, adding a simple switch
that disables the re-programming solves the problem.

Of course, there is a down-side to all this: the secure computers are going to
be harder to access and use than insecure ones.



>        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.)

Where did I put my virus writer's toolkit......goody found it

Hmmm, what to add.....

Program in FLASH memory, randomly low level format pieces of all discs
while playing Bach's Toccata and drawing stupid fractal landscapes on the
screen.  Finally, display the "I'm cold" message and fry the system's power
supply.  Add a mutation factor to improve survivability.... heh heh heh.....


Yep done it.  Got it into a few hundred bytes of code.  Now to infect the
world!


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If you read this far on a PC then you're system will be infected and
your life is just about over!!! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha




        						Pauli :-)

Who's this knocking at my door?  A couple of friendly men in white coats.
And they've got a new jacket for me to wear.  The sleeves are a bit too long
for me though.