PCOEN@drew.bitnet (Paul Coen) (07/24/90)
I was wondering about the feasability of say, for example,
writing a program for MS-DOS which checks, say, Amiga programs for
viruses (using strings, of course). It seems like any platform should
be able to scan the files of any other. On the Drew Underground BBS
(201-377-4065) for example, we have Mac and Amiga files, even though
we run under MS-DOS (soon to be PC-MOS). Being able to scan the Amiga
files would be useful, or the Mac files, or whatever. I'm sure there
are other systems or BBS'es that would benefit from this as well.
Anyway, I just thought I'd throw this out for discussion.
Paul Coen -- Drew University Academic Computer Center
Co-sysop, Drew University Underground BBS
pcoen@drunivac.drew.edu pcoen@drunivac.bitnetjohn@uunet.uu.net (07/31/90)
Paul,
Most virus scanning software does simple pattern matching
of an existing 'known-virus' database against any files that you 'scan'.
If you have a list of viruses for the machine in question, it shouldn't
matter what platform you do the actual scan on. I have successfully
used a product called CERTUS in the exact manner that you described in
your letter. I simply defined a database for each platform and then
did the comparisons with the appropriate database based on the software
extension.
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