haraty@uunet.UU.NET (Ramzi A. Haraty) (04/26/91)
Greetings, Does anybody know how to handle viruses in a database system? In a database environment there would certainly be a lot of updates and I was wondering how could one limit the infection of viruses into data items. In other words, how do we guarantee that untrusted users or processes won't infect our database with viruses? P.S. I am talking at the system level here. Thanks is advance Ramzi Haraty email: haraty@plains.nodak.edu
frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) (05/03/91)
Ramzi A. Haraty writes: >Greetings, > Does anybody know how to handle viruses in a database system? Well, for now you can just ignore them - they don't exist. :-) Seriously though - a virus can only INFECT executable code, not data items in a database. The data items can be CORRUPTED by a virus, but not in a way that will spread the infection. For example, there exist two viruses targeted against dBASE, known as 'dBASE-virus' and 'DBF-blank virus'. Both are extremely rare, and it is doubtful if they exist "in the wild". They both corrupt database information, but they do not infect the database itself. - -frisk