rlp@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Bob Powell) (01/17/90)
In article <679@s5.Morgan.COM> jordan@Morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) writes: >Are there any recorded cases of MIDI viruses? > >Anyone want to speculate on such a thing? Sure I'll speculate! I wonder what one would sound like, if it got played. Since MIDI information is "just" data, I'm not sure if it could be used to transmit a virus. If I'm not mistaken, a virus has to "run," that is, be a program of some sort, though it can be a very small program. MIDI transfers information between systems (in this case, musical instruments), but the information doesn't "run" by itself, and it never gets the chance to. Now, if a virus infected a system transmitting MIDI data (such as a sequencer or PC-based MIDI recorder), it could certainly send bad data. Or, it could send a sequence of MIDI data that would activate a virus-infected system, where the virus would lie dormant until such activation. Just a couple ideas. Bob
rlp@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Bob Powell) (01/17/90)
Sorry 'bout that last one (the MIDI virus thing). The original posting was on alt.cyberpunk. I sent the follow-up, and didn't check the Newsgroups line. I don't know why the original was also supposed to go to alt.postmodern as well as alt.cyberpunk. Didn't mean to clutter this group. Just in case, did anyone here find anything interesting in the followup? :)