Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 08:14:45 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: A geeky question
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:
> The "Blaster" worm that did in Microsoft software . . .
>
> Are other operating systems designed to be worm/virus immune?
> Or that no one cares to write worms/viruses for most other operating =
> systems.
>
> & let's keep the Microsoft bashing to a dull roar . . .
>
> mjw

You can't have an epidemic unless the population density is large enough
to allow it to spread.  Macintosh viruses exist, but they're rare.  I
think somebody wrote a Linux virus once to show it can be done.

Other OSs weren't written to "be worm/virus immune" because the concept
wasn't around when they were written.  Except for MacOS, they were
simply written to be reasonably secure.

The current crop of nasties don't really use the OS, they use Microsoft
Office and Microsoft's e-mail programs to spread.  The "macro extension
language" that these programs use is basically a virus writer's toolkit.
  Microsoft has, in general, shown themselves to be utterly clueless
about computer security.

The basic idea of a virus was first described in Ken Thompson's Turing
Award speech "Reflections on Trusting Trust", available at
<http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/>.  Nothing, near as anybody knows,
is as nasty as the virus that Thompson describes here, but anybody
thinking about, say, computerized voting machines should read this paper.

The term "worm" comes from "The Shockwave Rider", by John Brunner
(1975).  Ahh, skiffy.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."