Ed Porter wrote:
Richard,
To the uninformed like me, can you explain why it would be so easy for an
intelligent person to cause great harm on the net. What are the major
weaknesses of the architectures of virtually all operating systems that
allow this. It is just lots of little bugs.
It would be possible to write a macrovirus with a long incubation
period, which did nothing to get it noticed until D-Day, then erase the
hard drive.
It only needs a lot of people to be using Microsoft Word: this by
itself is (or was: I am out of touch) the main transport mechanism.
There are some issues with how that would work, but since I don't want
to end up in Azkhaban, I'll keep my peace if you don't mind.
The only thing that might save us is the fact that Microsoft's
implementation of its own code is so incredibly bad that when it
duplicates macros, it has an alarmingly high screw-up rate, which means
the macros get distorted, which then means that the virus goes wrong. A
really bad virus would then show up, because broken viruses (called
'variants') can cause damage prematurely. Then, it would get noticed.
Richard Loosemore.
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