Re: VIRUS Alert for the LIST -- MIDRANGE-L

Ok now lets think about this. 

1) If a program is NOT a virus but totally disables your system so you
have to do a scratch install I don't think saying "Well I told you it
wasn't a virus" will satisfy your boss.

2) Any language that can create an object can replicate itself.  You
would not need to go beyond CL.  I think you may be considering
boot-sector viruses on PC's.  That is outdated.  Many PC viruses are
being written in Word Macro or Excel Macro.  NO prior programming
experience needed.  Replicate across a network of as400's - no problem
any of the networking gurus on this list could think of several ways to
do this.

3) You mention that it would be difficult to achieve in QSYS.LIB - no
reason to put it in there ?
of course no problems doing that either.  

4) I can write that virus in less than a week or Patrick Townsend will
eat a toad !!! ;)


Just Kidding of Course ... 

John Hall
Home Sales Co.

"L. S. Russell" wrote:
> 
> > Would a virus be effective if it just did a one line CL that did DLTCMD
> > ?
> 
> The main thing a virus, and indeed many trojans do is replicate and spread. 
>The
> object oriented file structure of the as/400 somewhat limits most common 
>methods
> of virus replication. So, IMHO more is required than just malicious code to
> qualify as a virus.


> 
> > The holes that would be needed would be in the security implementation.
> > Or to put it another way the virus would just have to hang around until
> > someone with ALLOBJ happened to run the program.
> 
> This is not true I remember reading an article in Midrange Computing by Wayne
> Evans where he detailed a method by which one could programmatically adopt
> *ALLOBJ.
> 
> > Your point's are valid.  But I am afraid that those situations are only
> > delaying the inevitable not preventing it.
> >
> > I hesitate to go into anymore detail but after thinking about it I know
> > it would be easy to do.
> > I don't want to publish a handbook on how to write a virus for the 400
> > :(
> 
> I think I agree with the previous message, virus writing on the 400 would 
>require
> much more than, even advanced RPG ILE. Because, a virus requires more than 
>just
> malicious code to be a virus.
> 
> What is a virus?
> A parasitic program written intentionally to enter a computer without the 
>users
> permission or knowledge. The word parasitic is used because a virus attaches 
>to
> files or boot sectors and replicates itself thus continuing to spread. Though
> some virus's do little but replicate others can cause serious damage or effect
> program and system performance. A virus should never be assumed harmless and 
>left
> on a system.
> 
> I would add here that a virus is self replicating, this is the very 
>definition of
> a virus, computer or otherwise, and this would be difficult to achieve in
> QSYS.LIB.
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