Re: Virus-IBMs crashing all around me...

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <1MAY199716253089@vax2.concordia.ca> spec@vax2.concordia.ca
(Mitchell Spector) writes:
>In article shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford) writes...
>
>>In article <5jr4fl$sl5@lynx.unm.edu>,
>>stephen e buggie <buggie@musca.unm.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>[snip]
>> 
>>>We Apple II users enjoy virus-free computing.   I've gotten software from 
>>>all imaginable sources (flea markets, yard sales, the net, etc.) and have 
>>>never yet seen a virus.
>> 
>>I got hold of a SYS program that was infected with the festering hate
>>virus once.
>
>    The only virus I ever encountered was when ZZCopy reported finding
>the "Starfighter II" virus on one of my 800K disks. Not sure if it was
>a glitch or it was really there, but I got rid of it making a copy of
>the disk onto itself (ZZCopy copies everything but the virus). Viruses
>are practically non-existent on the Apple II (sure there were a few,
>but they were taken out of circulation years ago, and even then it was
>not common getting one).

As long as we're swapping old war stories...

I once got some disks that were infected by LOAD RUNNER.  (It was pretty
stupid of me, really...I was over at a friend's house sharing disks, and
when I got home there it was on some of the disks I had used).

This was, alas, long before most IIGS users had ever heard of LOAD RUNNER,
so there were no disenfecting procedures available.  I stayed up half the
night disassembling the thing and figuring out how to safely disinfect it.
Fortunately I caught it early, so I only had to manually disinfect five or
six disks.

A few days later I learned that a recent "Disk of the Month" from the local
Apple II users group was infected.  What fun.


In nearly ten years of regular IIGS usage, that's the only virus infection
I've ever had.  It was actually a positive experience, since I learned some
interesting things from disassembling the code.

               - Neil Parker
-- 
Neil Parker                       | Unsolicited commercial e-mail to my
nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu         | address is not welcome, and will be
nparker@cie.uoregon.edu           | discarded unread.
http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker |