Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: rus rumor!
Keywords: NIGHTMARES!
Message-ID: <58407@sun.uucp>
Date: 29 Jun 88 18:03:10 GMT
References: <3152@crash.cts.com> <264@cadomin.UUCP> <58141@sun.uucp> <1705@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 24

In article <1705@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> maloff@calgary.UUCP (Sheldon Maloff) writes:
> I was under the assumption that the Spirit Technologies memory board
> for the a1000 (which I have) has a 2K battery backed up ram on board.
> I say assumption because I haven't looked at the specs lately, but that
> would mean it could be done, no?
> Sheldon

No. For any sort of computer virus to take effect, it has to be executed and
that will never ever happen with the 2K RAM. Now if you wanted to, you could
buy some TTL decoder chips and wire up an address decoder that decodes the
boot rom addresses to the spirit clock's ram, and overlayed the ROM. Then 
whatever was in the RAM would be executed first. However, no one that I know
will spend the two or three hours needed to kludge up such a circuit just so
they can be infected by a virus no one has written. (Note if you ever get a
Public Domain program that says "This will quintuple floppy disk accesses all
you need to do is rewire your Amiga with this complicated circuit and run my
program." you will no immediately that it is a bogus program.) 

There is no way for a virus to use the clock ram or battery to survive power
cycling. Period. 

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.