[LINK] Computer prions

[Glen Turner]

Rick Welykochy wrote:
> 
> On Radio National right now, an American professor is discussing
> "computer prions". These little beasties are like viruses, but nastier.
> Infection can occur by simply opening an email. And the payload is
> intended to run your harddrive and other hardware into oblivion.

Actually, they're less nasty.

Like real virii, self-replicating programs in the Internet
face the problem that total destruction of the host destroys
them too.  It would have been useful for the learned professor
to tease out the epidemiological principles that "virus"
suggests.

I wouldn't be too high-and-mighty about Linux.  StarOffice documents
will happily run shell scripts.  It's not the operating system but
the applications that are providing the exposure.

The solution, attaching an authorisation to each data stream,
is well known but not deployed in either Windows or Linux.

-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised