[comp.sys.mac] Virus

engber@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Mike Engber) (09/12/88)

We have around 75 mac+'s w/20M HDs publicly available for students to use.
We were We were recently hit by a virus. I'd like some suggestions on how
we can protect ourselves.

My idea is to use a hard disk partitioning program to split the hardisks
into 2 partitions; one with the system + applications and one for the
students to use. If we could lock the system partition, it seems that
this would solve our problem for the most part. (I'll concede that a
determined and bright enough person can always do damage)

Do any of the currently available partitioning packages allow this?

Does anyone see any problems with my suggestion and/or does anyone have
any other ideas?

Please respond email and I'll post a summary if I get a soln.

-ME  engber@speedy.cs.wisc.edu

larson@unix.SRI.COM (Alan Larson) (11/16/88)

Recently I used the Virus Rx program from Apple to check the condition
of my hard disk.  (All was fine, fortunately.)  Later, I happened to
notice that some programs which had the generic application icon had
changed to showing the icon for Virus Rx.

It appears that Virus Rx had a creator of '    ' (4 blanks), which is
the default if not filled in by several compilers.  It also included
an icon attached to that creator, which got propigated to the desktop
and used for other programs with the same creator field.

The interesting part is that it does not seem necessary to actually
run the Virus Rx program to do this!  We have a 'virus' (the bogus
icon) that spreads if you just put the file on the disk.


How do I get rid of this?  I have thrown away the Virus Rx program
from the hard disk, but the icon is still there.

I do not want to rebuild the desktop, as many of my files have comments
with them, and I do not want to lose those.

	Alan

tantuico@andromeda.rutgers.edu.rutgers.edu (Samuel B Tantuico) (07/26/89)

Could someone e-mail me the names of the viruses that are 
currently out there and what each do to the system. 

						Thanks, 
							sAm

Rutgers-Newark COSII  
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[] tantuico@andromeda.rutgers.edu
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