[comp.virus] mac virus

ROEBUCK@admin1.usask.ca (Terry (TR) Roebuck; 966-4841) (10/06/90)

Recently I was delivering a course to new mac users at a school in
Swift Current (that's in Saskatchewan; in Canada - for those
collecting strange city names).  The school has 20 MAC+'s, with
Seagate20MB external drives.  All of the users are new to the mac -
several had never even turned on their machines yet.  I happened to
bring Disinfectant 2.1 (I have 2.2 now thanks) with me, so I checked
all of the hard disks. 7 of the 20 were infected with nVIR which was
(accolades to the author(s?) of disinfectant) easily repaired.

I post this since it shows how persuasive some viruses (viri?) can be;
the typical users at that site would have *NEVER* thought about
checking. (sigh)

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Terry Roebuck; Computing Services; University of Saskatchewan; Saskatoon
(306) 966 4841 ---- it never rain's but it freezes --- roebuck@sask.usask.ca
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tak@micor.ocug.on.ca (Keith Takayesu) (10/13/90)

ROEBUCK@admin1.usask.ca (Terry (TR) Roebuck; 966-4841) writes:

> I post this since it shows how persuasive some viruses (viri?) can be;
> the typical users at that site would have *NEVER* thought about
> checking. (sigh)

I've found that the educational market (i.e. schools, universities,
etc.)  are the worst for spreading ANYTHING. This is partially a
function of the ease with which Macintosh files can be copied, and the
desire for poor students to copy anything of interest.  It does not
seem to happen as much at IBM PC sites, since files are harder to
copy. For instance, WordPerfect on the macintosh only really requires
1 diskette (2 if you want spell checking), or even just the
application file; on the PC, you need MANY diskettes to copy the files
& it's not so easy to determine which ones are needed.  The last place
that I had to install WP 5.0 only had 5.25" drives, and there was a
pile of 15 source diskettes!

Keith Takayesu, DMR Group Inc.