Re: How Secure is Windows, Really?

What is the definition of a virus?  Is a malicious program a virus?

David Gibbs wrote:

Haase, Justin C. wrote:

If someone wrote a malicious program and somehow the program was
uploaded and executed on the System i, that means the System i could
indeed get a virus.  It's just that no one has written one yet nor is
it easy to bring it to the system.  Here's someone's chance to create
history.  It's only been available for 18 years, what's the holdup?
;)

While technically that's true ... it's a lot harder to do on the System
i than it is on a PC.

How do you get a program from a foreign system on to the System i?  You
save it to a savefile, transfer it to the system, restore it, make sure
the authorities are correct, and the you can execute it.  Kind of hard
to do that using email or even a web server.

Additionally, in order to do any user level damage the program would
probably have to adopt qsecofr authority.  That's hard enough to do
(unless you already have the authority).  To do system level damage the
program would need to be system state ... which is next to impossible
(not impossible, but almost).

A virus scanning package that truly protects the System i from viruses
would have a virus def list with zero entries.

Scanning the System i itself shouldn't be necessary ... the viruses
should be eliminated BEFORE they get to the system.

JMHO, of course. :)

david