Re: Apple IIGS and viruses...

[Jeff Blakeney <CUTjblakeney@syndicomm.com>]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 20:14:19 +1200, Jeff Thomas <a2forever@usa.net>
wrote:

>I was reading in a magazine published during 1990 that three viral-type
>programs existed on IIGS. One of them, is hard to detect and after
>random disk changes begins wiping disks, re-writing the first four
>blocks of track zero, copying itself to each disk. Is this common? What
>is the most effective and update anti-virus program that detects this
>one and others since?

The only virii for the Apple II series I know are probably the ones
mentioned in that article.  Two of them were pretty much benign (one
changed the IIgs border, background and text colour to black so it
looked like your machine wasn't working if you were in text mode and
the other wiped out blocks 0 and 1 of every online volume so that you
could no longer boot from those disks until you copied those blocks
back from a still bootable disk) but the third one was nasty (erased
entire disks).

As far as I know, those were the only virii to exist for the Apple II
series and are still the only ones.  There were a few virus checker
programs (ProSel had a checker I believe and I think the Salvation
utilities did too) but I never paid much attention to them seeing as
there were so few virii and lots of knowledgeable people to clean up
archives so that they would no longer get spread.

This is all based on memory so I can't be 100% sure that I've gotten
all my facts right.  :-)

-- 
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in the
                 Apple II Community on Syndicomm.com
 CUT the obvious from my address if you want to e-mail me