19 Nov
2001
19 Nov
'01
1:22 p.m.
I can't think of a way for a virus to jump onto a
disk on a Mac simply
by the disk being there, without any virus-infected program
running. Unless a virus has attacked the Finder or the OS itself,
which is a possibility, I suppose.
WDEF could do this, but it was rendered dead by System 7 (it infected the
System 6 and earlier desktop database, so when a disk was inserted, it
could spread to any uninfected desktop databases)
But even then, the virus can't jump *off* the disk
onto a previously
clean system without running something from the disk, and that won't
happen unless you explicitly tell it to. If there's some way for that
to happen on Windows, then Windows is definitely more virus-friendly!
Auto-Start worms, but then, you are really sort of running something off
the disk (the worm), and these can be stopped by turning off the auto run
on insert in the QuickTime control panel.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>