Re: PhD Topic suggestions

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:04:42 +0100
"William Fitzgerald (BH/EEI)" <william.fitzgerald-IzeFyvvaP7pWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Antony,
> 
> Thanks for your input. I agree. But lets suppose we do not use virus technology to go and save computers from viruses but use the technology to spread, say node updates or security patches. In other words i could build some sort of virus envelope that contains some updates for nodes. However I am still left with the problem of people wanting control over their nodes even if "good" is intended.
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: openantivirus-discuss-admin-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org
> [mailto:openantivirus-discuss-admin-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org]On Behalf Of
> Antony Stone
> Sent: 10 December 2003 12:11
> To: 'openantivirus-discuss-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org'
> Subject: Re: [Openantivirus-discuss]PhD Topic suggestions
> 
> 
> On Wednesday 10 December 2003 11:32 am, William Fitzgerald (BH/EEI) wrote:
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I have just joined the group. I am interested in persuing virology as part
> > of my PhD associated with Ericssons Ireland. I was wondering if anyone has
> > any ideas that merit 3 years research. I was thinking of using viruses for
> > a good purpose like dissemination of healthy  information. any ideas?
> 
> I believe most examples of this approach (Naachi comes to mind as a recent 
> one) have been generally poorly regarded by the Internet community, on the 
> basis that the author of a 'good virus' cannot predict every operating system 
> / application software / user configuration setup which the virus is going to 
> encounter, and with any viral code, even small mistakes can lead to disaster 
> once the thing starts replicating in the wild (I'm reminded that the first 
> Internet worm, courtesy of Robert T Morris, was not intended to spread the 
> way it did - that was due to a programming error).
> 
> Basically people do not want you releasing code which is intended to do things 
> to their computer without them having control over it.
> 
> It's the difference between a virus and a patch.   Okay, some patches don't 
> quite work as advertised, but at least you know where it's come from and who 
> supplied it, so you have someone to go back to if it causes problems.

Yes, it is for this reason alone that this wont work.  In the case of microsoft patches for windows there are a lot of cases where a patch is worse than the exploit it is suppose to fix.  Windows patches dont limit themselves to patching just the hole they are advertised to fix as well.  And different versions of windows react differently to patches and/or the hole that the worm would infect.  Like the recent blaster worm was intended to infect XP but would cause Win2k to crash and reboot if I remember correctly. 

Now it would be nice to have a worm that could identify infected or vulnerable computers and inform the user with an email or something and maybe shutting down the computer but that would be exploited by spammers at the very least.

A better idea is to have nodes ask for updates from a central server because then the number and time of updates could be controlled as well as the source of updates.  
 
> 
> Just my 2c, anyway....
> 
> Antony.
> 
> -- 
> I want to build a machine that will be proud of me.
> 
>  - Danny Hillis, creator of The Connection Machine
> 
> 
> 
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