USERGSVE@LNCC.BITNET (George Svetlichny) (03/29/91)
I - Taking out A: After a recent attack by Joshi on my department's XT used for TeX editing, I decided to try a dirty approach against boot viruses: taking out the A: drive and leaving only drive B: around. The hardware complains at boot-up but continues on to boot from the Winchester. With this success, I did the same on most other two-drive machines (a few administrative programs require a disk in A: to function), and reconfigured the one-drive machine's drives to be B: also. Some fiddling with set-up's and hardware is usually required. Since no user *really* needs two floppy drives this should take care of all boot infectors which by the way are the most common viruses around here (Ping-Pong, Stoned, and Joshi are endemic in Rio de Janeiro). Of course, if I ever need to boot from a floppy, I will have to open the machine and mess around with cables or jumpers, but this is so rare that it doesn't seem like an unreasonable price. Any comments? DICLAIMER - If anyone else tries this, he/she does at own risk, I cannot be held responsible for any damage or inconvenience resulting from unusual hardware configurations. II - USSR BBS In Virus-l 4/48 Selden E. Ball, Jr. <seb@lns61.tn.cornell.edu> writes: > It is now possible to direct-dial computer bulletin boards in the USSR > and eastern European countries. Many of them are already on FidoNet. > The following list of BBSs was recently posted to a widely read > news group. > > The potential transmission speed for computer viruses is > increasing faster than your favorite comparison. > sigh. Selden is here trying to perpetrate the popular myth that BBSs are a major vector for computer virus transmission. Discounting the rare "Virus BBSs" the opposite is usually true. Instead of seeing in the increased number of Soviet BBSs a new virus threat, the prolifiration of networked BBSs should be welcomed as a potential and strong ally in the dissimination of proper anti-virus information and tools. This has certainly been the case here in Brazil. George Svetlichny | Department of Mathematics | Pontificia Universidade Catolica | Rio de Janeiro, Brasil | usergsve@lncc.bitnet |
mrs@netcom.com (Morgan Schweers) (03/31/91)
Greetings,
I recently recommended to a network site that they lock their 'A'
drives with a network boot diskette in them. Their 'B' drives should
remain unlocked for data transfer. There are many companies that make
disk drive door-locks, and this is a much 'nicer' solution than
removing the drive entirely. In fact, one could lock the drive doors
WITHOUT a disk in them, thus forcing a boot from the HD, and still
allowing access to the B drive by anyone (and access to the 'A' drive
by the computer-manager).
The person commenting on the 'USSR BBS's' was SPECIFICALLY (as I
recall) talking about the 'pro-virus' BBS's in the USSR. This is why
they commented on the possible increase in virus spreading rates. The
actual number of BBS's available from outside of the USSR is
statistically insignificant for the tracking of viral spread.
Moreover, as was said, BBS's are a very *RARE* way for viruses to
spread (with the exception of BBS's dedicated to viruses). In fact,
the current leader in virus statistics is the Stoned virus, a virus
that is NOT INFECTIOUS through BBS's without hard work. <Chuckle>
-- Morgan Schweers
+-----
"Don't believe a word this man says. He's insane." -- mrs@netcom.com
"Everything he says is true. He's the only sane person." -- ms@gnu.ai.mit.edu
The contents of this message are the authors opinion, which (obviously) varies
with many random variables. Everything is true, nothing is permissible.
- -----+"rivero@dev8.mdcbbs.com"@MDCBBS.COM (04/03/91)
mrs@netcom.com (Morgan Schweers) writes: > Greetings, > I recently recommended to a network site that they lock their 'A' > drives with a network boot diskette in them. Their 'B' drives should > remain unlocked for data transfer. There are many companies that make > disk drive door-locks, and this is a much 'nicer' solution than > removing the drive entirely. In fact, one could lock the drive doors > WITHOUT a disk in them, thus forcing a boot from the HD, and still > allowing access to the B drive by anyone (and access to the 'A' drive > by the computer-manager). I know a lot of sites ( and will probably use this in my own setup soon) in which one small PC is the lone interface to the outside world. It is a one way gate. There is no way to communicate from the PC to the internal systems, only from the internal systems to the PC. The PC connection to the world is two way. This is a hardwire job, and thus effectivly prevents a virus attack from getting any further than the PC ( which is kinked with all kinds of detection and elimination code).