DUCKENFP@carleton.edu (Paul Duckenfield (Consultant, User Services)) (02/19/90)
As I mentioned in a previous message, we have had (and probably still have) WDef B running about Carleton College's Macintosh community. So far, it appears to have restricted itself to the public labs and has yet to break into the general computing community. I have found that RAM disks on public Macintosh Pluses have greatly limited the spread of the virus because no single machine can have the virus for very long (invariably, we have to reboot each machine every couple of hours). Even if a RAM disk is infected, it is unlikely to infect many other users since the RAM disk will be reset in a matter of hours. This is our first line of protection. At the moment, we are redoing the master RAM startup disks so that they have WDef protection as well. That will be our second line of defense. Our final line of defense is (hopefully) the responsibility of the individual user to obtain virus protection from the Micro Lab and put it on his Macintosh. With a good bit of publicity, this might be successful. Another problem which we have had to deal with is recurring system crashes on our AppleShare servers even after the eradication of WDef. Although WDef if "officially" gone thanks to Disinfectant v1.6, the servers still seem to crash regularly. It appears that WDef, like polio can be cured, but it leaves lasting damage. The only solution I have found is to delete the unused DESKTOP file on all server volumes. This brought the number of crashes down from four a day to zero for a week. Paul Duckenfield Carleton College CC User Services Micro Consultant DUCKENFP@CARLETON.EDU