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- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!emory!nastar!phardie
- From: phardie@nastar.uucp (Pete Hardie)
- Subject: Re: Beneficial Virus?
- Message-ID: <1993Jan8.151721.29014@nastar.uucp>
- Organization: Digital Transmission Systems, Duluth, GA.
- References: <C0GIA7.4Fz@panix.com> <1993Jan7.152339.25886@nastar.uucp> <C0IDMu.By5@panix.com>
- Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 15:17:21 GMT
- Lines: 99
-
- In article <C0IDMu.By5@panix.com> rpowers@panix.com (Richard Powers) writes:
- >In <1993Jan7.152339.25886@nastar.uucp> phardie@nastar.uucp (Pete Hardie) writes:
- >>If I do not know the virus is in place on the multi0user system (and if it
- >
- >How would you not know it is in place? You would have had to place it
- >there yourself. Or at very least placed the marker file.
-
- <sigh>
-
- It's a *multi-user* system. Another user could have installed it. I might
- NOT be the owner.
-
- >All it needs to "deserve" the name virus is the ability to replicate
- >itself.
-
- More on this later.
-
- >>Not necessarily. Some systems operate user accounts under suffrance - you
- >>get only what the admins allow. Others allow privacy, but do not guarantee
- >>anything else. The raw format of the data is not usually guaranteed, like
- >>the position of files on a disk is not guaranteed.
- >
- >I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If the system in question
- >has no guarantees about anything, I don't want to be on the system,
- >BCV or not.
-
- Does the sysadmin at your school/business always tell you when s/he installs
- something new? Swaps out one disk for another? etc, etc.
-
- If I am a user on a multi-user system, and the admin has installed this BCV
- several years ago, I do not necessarily get *any* information about it or
- its presence onthe system.
-
- >>An admin who installed a device driver that compressed all files would
- >>be doing the same thing, in essence, and would not be likely to tell the
- >>users, except as bragging about the regained disk space :-)
- >
- >IMO _if_ the existence of the virus will have any impact on the users,
- >the admin has an obligation to notify those users. This is not the
- >same as a device driver. With a device driver the effects should be
- >totally transparent to the user. And again, if it is _not_
- >transparent, then the users should know.
-
- From the descriptions of the BCV, if the marker file is present, it *IS*
- totally transparent. How will I know, if I arrive after the installation
- of the BCV, that it is in place?
-
- >>>(1) Remove itself. The BCV would decompress the file and then save it
- >
- >>This would be the only ethical option for a 'beneficial virus', IMHO.
- >
- >Not this method alone, IMHO. If you have so much of your usable disk
- >space compressed that not everything will fit uncompressed, then this
- >method alone would be disastrous.
-
- If the marker file is gone, the re-compression code is gone, right? Every
- executable will be decompressed over time, leading to this very state.
-
- >>This starts to make the program less of a virus, since it becomes more of
- >>a system utility.
- >
- >It is a virus because it replicates itself. Period.
-
- I don't think so.
-
- Computer virii are called that for their similarity to bilogical virii, which
- are simply 'core' of DNA that use *another* cell to reproduce. I can write a
- program that will replicate itself, but unless it *resides within* another
- executable, and *inserts itself* into other executables, it's not a VIRUS,
- it's a WORM. A virus is (in the canonical definition) a self-contained code
- fragment that resides in an executable, and copies itself into other
- executables. If the marker file was just a flag, you'd still have a virus, but
- once it starts being code, you no longer have a virus. I'm not sure if there
- is a good term for what it is, however.
-
- >>It also makes it possible for a user to infect a system without the
- >>owner's knowledge.
- >
- >I assume you are referring to method (4)? I covered that above. Read
- >the underlined again.
- > ^^^^^^^^^^
-
- No. I meant that Joe User could install the virus and marker file on the
- multi-user system run by Mary Sysadmin.
-
- >The whole idea has involved from the original to deal with a lot of
- >nitpicking problems. The original context was a hypothetical concept
- >to refute the idea that a beneficial virus is inherently _impossible_.
-
- Define beneficial. Now get 100 people to agree with you.
-
- That's the problem with a beneficial virus - we don't all agree that X action
- is always beneficial.
-
- --
- Pete Hardie: phardie@nastar (voice) (404) 497-0101
- Digital Transmission Systems, Inc., Duluth GA
- Member, DTS Dart Team | cat * | egrep -v "signature virus|infection"
- Position: Goalie |
-