lev@suned1.Nswses.Navy.MIL (Lloyd E Vancil) (02/28/91)
With all of the news lately about various viri and other beasties. I was
wondering about the possibility of a hardware approach to protection.
Would there be any advantage to sequestering the system files (IO.com,
Command.com, Config.sys etc) in a write protected piece of EPROM. Since
the beasties I have been reading about, bootsectors and such like, need
a boot sector to run from it seems to me that this would be one way of
protecting your system.
I have to admit, this is not a completely my own brainstorm. I was looking
at a friends Tandy TL/2 (80286 on a limited Mother board). That's the way they
sell their systems, with the line, "you don't have to know a lot to use this
machine."
--
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. lev@suned1.nswses.navy.mil + .
+ * S.T.A.R.S.! The revolution has begun! *
----------------- My employer has no opinions. These are mine! ----------------cy5@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Conway Yee) (03/01/91)
In article <8158@suned1.Nswses.Navy.MIL> lev@suned1.UUCP (Lloyd E Vancil) writes: > > >With all of the news lately about various viri and other beasties. I was >wondering about the possibility of a hardware approach to protection. >Would there be any advantage to sequestering the system files (IO.com, >Command.com, Config.sys etc) in a write protected piece of EPROM. Since >the beasties I have been reading about, bootsectors and such like, need >a boot sector to run from it seems to me that this would be one way of >protecting your system. >I have to admit, this is not a completely my own brainstorm. I was looking >at a friends Tandy TL/2 (80286 on a limited Mother board). That's the way >they sell their systems, with the line, "you don't have to know a lot to >use this machine." Well, this would protect the system files from infection but would allow any other executable files to be infected. Thus, the virii threat would scarcely be reduced. The only noticable difference would be that it would be much more difficult to upgrade the operating system. The fact that EPROM's are used would scarcely make a difference. In order to program an EPROM, one needs to erase the old program with UV light and then use an EPROM programmer to insert the new program. Very few users would have access to such devices. It would be far easier for the OS distributors to distribute the chips themselves. If the OS distributors were to distribute the chip upgrades, few would be willing to make the upgrade. Many pc owners are technophobes in the sense that they regard their pc's to be mysterious black boxes which should rarely be opened up for fear of screwing things up. This is probably not true for the Internet crowd but this is a self selected sample scarcely representative of the typical PC owner. Conway Yee, N2JWQ yee@ming.mipg.upenn.edu (preferred) 231 S. Melville St. cy5@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (forwarded to above) Philadelphia, Pa 19139 yee@bnlx26.nsls.bnl.gov (rarely checked) (215) 386-1312