Archived viruses, was Re: Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system?

[Electronics Plus]

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Liam Proven
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2016 9:37 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Archived viruses, was Re: Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system?

On 22 October 2016 at 21:21, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Oct 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> :-)
>> A good 5-6y or more ago I restored an old Mac Classic II a friend 
>> gave me. I got it dual-booting System 6.0.8 and 7.1 and had both of 
>> them online via an Asanté EtherSCSI interface. To do this involved 
>> downloading a lot of ancient Mac software on my B&W G3 under OS X, 
>> and putting it on Zip disk, then putting the Zip media in the Classic 
>> II's SCSI Zip drive.
>> One of the Systems on the Classic was repurposed from another Mac and 
>> included some ancient Mac antivirus program -- I forget which one, 
>> maybe Disinfectant. I was glad of it, though, as it triggered and 
>> found one of my downloads was infected with an equally ancient Mac 
>> virus.
>
>
> But "Marketing" convinced the public that Macs were IMMUNE TO GETTING
> VIRUSES!    :-)


No no no -- hang on.

Classic MacOS was appallingly vulnerable. It had no user-account security at all, and every disk had a tiny bit of code read and executed when it was mounted, AIUI, to customise the icon etc.

Personal computer viruses more or less originated on the classic Mac.

But OS X is effectively immune to all of them, and AFAIK there are no true viruses for OS X even now. But you need to use a narrow strict definition. There are many Trojans, but they need to social-engineer or trick the user into agreeing, clicking OK and entering a password.
That's not a virus if it requires user interaction to propagate.

Ditto there are sploits and worms that attack OS X servers, but since OS X servers are fairly rare, so are the sploits. And OS X has a much-modified FreeBSD userland underneath it, and some of those componets are vulnerable too.

So it's a bit of a hair-splitting argument.

What it is _not_ is plain marketing lies, such as "Windows NT is a microkernel".

--
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I still have sealed packs of installation software for very early laptops with DOS. Some of them probably have the Stoned virus on them. I used to have factory original CD install disks from Zip drives, but I threw them all out, because they were all infected with viruses. Iomega was kind enough to send me clean install disks, after I mailed them back one of the infected disks. That prompted a huge recall, back in the 90s. I remember seeing web screens in the early 2000s from viruses; one was a picture of Zeus holding a lightning bolt with the caption "Watch out for Zeus, he will kick your ass!" Another was a picture of the old Kilroy was here, but had the caption of Kiljoy was here. Kiljoy would stay on for about 5 seconds, and then gradually all the network services would be stopped and then deleted from the computer.