RE: How Secure is Windows, Really?

From: Raby, Steve

As for iSeries programmers being morally unable to write viruses because
they "aren't built that way" as someone roughly said, I don't think that
really holds water. Just my thoughts.

As I explained in my earlier message, it's not the payload that makes a
virus so nasty, it's the worm.  And I didn't say anything about iSeries
programmers being any different morally than anyone else; we simply don't
have time to create a worm.

Logic bombs at the crude "CL blowup" level take anywhere from a few minutes
to a few hours of work.  On the other hand, the amount of time required to
craft a buffer overrun payload is relatively extensive, and you have to have
an exploit to start with in the first place.  With the exception of a very
few programmers, there isn't anybody in our community that can identify even
the starting exploit required to build a worm, much less has the time to
write and test one.

You have to be both brilliant and really sick to create a virus intended to
harm others, and you also have to have the access to the machine and the
time to create the virus, and finally you have to have a way to get this
payload to other machines.

I'm saying that that particular combination of things doesn't exist in the
iSeries community.  When someone IS smart enough to do something like that,
we don't get a virus... we get FAST/400.  <smile>

Maybe when we get i5/OS on every desktop and there's a nice pretty GUI to
attract the L33T D00DZ and people starting using lots of Open Source
Software whose inner workings they don't understand, then maybe we can have
some iSeries viruses.  But until then, I'm willing to bet you that you can't
get a virus loaded on any iSeries unless you have at the very least a valid
user profile and password to the machine.

Joe