🚀 go-pugleaf

srodawa@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Ron Srodawa) writes:

> Viruses (otherwise known as trojan horses) are not as severe a problem in
> systems with protection facilities so long as the sysadmin is smart enough
> to never run them from a privileged account.
> 
> Still, the best prevention is to receive your source and objects only from
> trusted sites.  The Simtel-20 collection of MS-DOS software contains many
> binary-only files.  In each case the binary is checked with a virus scanner
> and it is accepted only from a trusted source, generally the original author.

Viruses and trojan horses are not the same thing. Viruses spread by 
infecting other programs. Trojan horses are programs that claim to do one 
thing, but do something else, or something else in addition to what is 
claimed, like play a game while deleting your system files for example. 
Virus scanners only detect the older more common viruses. They are not as 
good at detecting new (or variant) viruses, or the new mutating viruses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                            -= Max Cray =-
 Net:     underg%max@uunet.uu.net                         Support
 UUCP:    ...!uunet!underg!max                            Free
 Data:    The Underground Computing Foundation BBS        Software
          401-847-2603 -=- 9600 baud (v.32)               (w/src)
 CI$:     76334,2203