On 10/23/2016 09:15 PM, Mouse wrote: >> My favorite formatter was my S100 crate with CP/M, [it's] impossible >> to give a single user OS without background processing a virus. > I disagree. I see nothing about "a single-user OS without background > processing" that would prevent a virus from infecting other programs, > even including the OS, when it's run, and potentially doing something > else as well. > > Perhaps you are using some meaning of "virus" other than "piece of > software that infects other software to propagate itself"? That's the > only meaning that makes any sense to me. > > /~\ The ASCII Mouse > \ / Ribbon Campaign > X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B > Its highly unlikely as first it would have to install itself and do so without corrupting the OS. CP/M-80 is a machine monitor with a file system and lacking most of the usual read the disk and "do something" automation. The only automation in CP/M is logging a drive which is reading the directory and mapping used blocks. So the initial load would have to be performed by the user. Trogan maybe, social engineered for sure, virus no. The key is you have to actually execute a file for action to happen. In CP/M you can disk dump sectors and never execute them, formatting is even more benign, the disk is never read save for a post format verify.
There is no boot block save for system tracks and even then the OS is not wired to write them without a utility so other than boot in rom(usually) its kinda hard to pollute the disk though powering off with it in the drive usually will kill a sector making it unreadable. There are many other OSs that equally as crude such as Northstar Dos or for that fact OS/8. Old machines do not evaluate like current winders, linux, OSX in that perspective. The extreme opposing end of the spectrum is a VAX running VMS/OVMS the level of protection is high enough that you would spend much time and effort to find the way to get something above the user account level. In that case you can pollute your self maybe share with friends assuming you don't user crash first. Allison
