bill@cbmvax.UUCP (Bill Koester CATS) (01/05/88)
After being away for 3 days (New Years and all!) I was amazed to find my mailbox full of messages regarding the virus. Well, I am glad people are showing this kind of interest and concern. Let me try to answer some of the big questions. DO/DON't distribute the SCA VIRUS PROTECTOR: I will not distribute ANY virus protector unless (a) I wrote it! (b) I have the source. In the case of the SCA VIRUS PROTECTOR even the source might not help since it only checks for the original SCA virus. DO/DON't distrubute the VIRUS source: I will NEVER distrubute the source to ANY virus or anything that could be harmfull to the Amiga or it's users. DON't endorse the VIRUS as helping to thwart pirating: I never endorsed this or any virus. My comment a while back < Good Point! > may have been misunderstood. I meant simply that, yes, there may indeed be people out there that will think twice about pirating software for fear of infection. That is all I meant! AIDS is not a good thing either but I think it has made many people aware of the risks of casual sex. The virus has made users aware of the risks of pirating or accepting pirated software. REMOVE BOOTSTRAP CAPABILITIES / HARDWARE PROTECTION: George Robbins covered this in detail in a recent posting and I agree! DO THIS THAT THE OTHER THING IN VCheck: All V1.x versions of VCheck where quick and dirty hacks to get a detector into the user community. VCheck2.0 is now in the works and will be much smarter than its predecessors it will have the ability to learn about new virus's and restore life to some infected disks. I hate to make comments about software that is yet to be completed, but, I believe VCheck2.0 will effectively neutralize the current strains as well as any others that crop up. COMMODORE SHOULD TAKE THE INITIATIVE WITH THIS: We are doing everything possible to correct/eliminate this problem. You, yes you can help us with this. If you think you have found a new virus, one that VCheck1.2 will not recognize PLEASE send an infected disk (CLEARLY MARKED) to: Bill Koester (CATS) Commodore International Ltd. 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 or call (215) 431-9355 -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bill Koester (CATS) >>Commodore Amiga Technical Support<< Commodore International Ltd. UUCP ..{allegra|burdvax|rutgers|ihnp4}!cbmvax!bill PHONE (215) 431-9355
john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) (01/05/88)
In article <3081@cbmvax.UUCP> bill@cbmvax.UUCP (Bill Koester CATS) writes: >DO THIS THAT THE OTHER THING IN VCheck: > > All V1.x versions of VCheck where quick and dirty hacks to > get a detector into the user community. VCheck2.0 is now > in the works and will be much smarter than its predecessors Another thing that would be good (especially in light of people saying "I never boot except off a write-protected Workbench after cold starting my machine while wearing a condom" :-) would be a program called "reboot" that would tell you if your WarmStart vector had been altered, and force your machine through the normal C-A-A procedure. Maybe it could also check all romtags or whatever methods people use to preserve information across boots. BTW, I was unable to find a change-Kickstart program around here so I tried to write one using a function called "ColdReset" which is documented in one book I have. But it doesn't seem to exist. Is/was there such a system call anywhere? John -- "I hate to be the one to tell you this, Bryce, but there's more to life than interactive systems analysis." "I know. It also involves number crunching!" -- Max Headroom