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In defense of
computers
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In your
article "Beyond virtual
vaccinations" (SN: 7/31/99, p. 77), you mentioned that
the first computer virus was a 1987 bug called "Brain."
I also remember a virus named "Scores" that attacked
MacIntosh systems around the same time.
Steve Dana
Irvine, Calif.
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The July 31
issue contained an interesting summary of research into antiviral
strategies for computer systems. One consequence of such elaborate
immune systems could be autoimmune diseases and resistance to
"transplants." Imagine an operating system's immune
system attacking itself because the patterns of its users change
(maybe in a school computer at the beginning of a new year). Or
imagine having to supply immunosuppressive software in order to
add a hard drive and not have it be rejected. Imagine viruses with
the ability to snare and present "self" tags from the
host to avoid detection. I'm sure that researchers will overcome
this fox-and-rabbit arms race after a few more iterations, but one
can't help but be impressed by the depth of the biological
metaphor.
David
Honig
Irvine, Calif. |
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Mainframe
computer operating systems provide safeguards that prevent a program
from addressing areas of memory outside a specified region or
writing to data sets critical to the system. The Microsoft Windows
operating system used by virtually all personal computers provides
none of these safeguards. Windows is inherently incapable of
protecting itself, which, in my opinion, is a fatal flaw in the
design of the operating system.
Instead of
resorting to methodologies that are inordinately complex,
computationally expensive, and probably temporary, researchers
should be working to build safeguards into the PC operating system
itself.
Virgil
H. Soule
Frederick, Md |
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The research
done by Steve R. White at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center
seems almost identical to that attributed to computer scientist
Jeffrey O. Kephart at that same facility, as reported in Scientific
American and Discover in 1994. Is this research in any way related
to that now being reported?
Roberto
De Leon
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Yes. Kephart works with Steve White's team at IBM. The
work we reported is the latest version of IBM's digital immune system,
of which Kephart's work was a part. In fact, in an earlier report in Science
News (SN: 7/23/94, p. 63), we spoke to Kephart. —D.
Christensen |
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