vail@tegra.com (Johnathan Vail) (01/18/91)
> reports about "viruses in Hussein's rockets". According to dpa, > (unnamed) French computer scientists said: > > - manufacturers of war material usually implant, "for mere > commercial reasons", viruses in exported war electronics to > provoke, after some time, faults and "profitable repair > work"; Without specific comments about the cyberpunk musings of Iraqi weapons, is anyone else concerned about the usage of these terms? Specifically the tendancy of mostly non technical people to classify any intentional or unintentional bug and computer "nasty" as a virus? I see the terms defined more or less thus: Virus - A self replicating piece of code that is atached to another program or OS and that depends on that program running in order for it to be executed. This is what most of us reading here are familiar with. Worm - A self replicating program that is complete in itself. Usually replicating over a network. Morris's creation was the "Internet Worm". Trojan (Horse) - Code that included in a program that is intended to do something other than what the original program is supposed to do. Usually something bad. Magic Cookie - Code or feature put into a program intentionally by the programmer that is not part of the design. It is usually something harmless. Many instances of this in commercial software and the kind of thing that is alluded to in the post about military weapons. Another example is the 'xyzzy' command in DG's AOS operating system. "Discussion invited, flames discarded" ... jv "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." -- button _____ | | Johnathan Vail | n1dxg@tegra.com |Tegra| (508) 663-7435 | N1DXG@448.625-(WorldNet) ----- jv@n1dxg.ampr.org {...sun!sunne ..uunet}!tegra!vail