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From: ginosko!cg-atla!mallett@uunet.UU.NET (Bruce Mallett)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Anti-viral hard disk controllers
Message-ID: <0011.8909281133.AA14331@ge.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 89 20:37:15 GMT
Sender: Virus Discussion List 
Lines: 34
Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

Seems to me that virus infestation in companies could be controlled
through a little bit of dicipline and with the help of a modified hard
disk controller.  The scheme is to partition the hard disk into an
executable partition and into a data partition.  All executables are
kept on the bootable, outer partition.  The modified disk controller
has:
	switches which indicate the last track number of this outer
	partition

	a switch out the back to enable/disable writes to this outer
	partition.  Probably a rotary requiring a screw-driver or other
	tool to change.

In a corporate environment where systems are controlled I would think
that this would work quite well.  Virus software must be able to write
to executables to spread, and they would not be able to since the
partition containing them is hardware protected.  Without hardware
assist, software is always defeatable so no software solution is going
to guarantee protection against all infestations.

Dicipline is needed in several areas: administration to ensure that
systems get properly setup, environments defined correctly, etc.;
software packages must not maintain/modify data out of their
executable directories; users must not fiddle with the switch nor
import foreign, unknown software (by write-enabling the partition),
etc.

Note that programs run from the floppy can still wreak havoc to the
un- protected partition, but they cannot spread via the HD.

Is this workable?

[Ed. There is at least one commercial product that does exactly that,
but it's name escapes me.]