Is DOS under Unix immune?

[Peter da Silva]

In article <JES.90Aug2223811 at mbio.med.upenn.edu> jes at mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:
> We are considering adopting '386 Unix in the lab, but I'm curious
> about something.  Are the DOS under Unix implementations immune to the
> usual PC viruses?  If so, how (in a nutshell)?  If not, is the Unix
> filesystem safe at least?  I suppose most readers already know the
> answer(s), so just e-mail...

Existing PC viruses do not know about the particular environment of DOS-under-
UNIX. Boot infectors and many executable infectors will fail if you're using a
common disk image that's protected from writing by UNIX file protection.
Viruses that infect random application programs may still work.

I do know that some places doing work on viruses use DOS-under-UNIX as a
"clean lab" environment. It's certainly going to be a lot harder for a DOS
virus to infect such a setup. I don't know of any existing viruses that
could make the jump over to UNIX, but I'm sure I could devise one if I
was so inclined.

Summary: It's a highly resistant if not immune environment.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
<peter at ficc.ferranti.com>