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14) Can't viruses sometimes be useful? (Computer virus)




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This article is from the Computer viruses FAQ, by David Harley D.Harley@icrf.icnet.uk, George Wenzel gwenzel@telusplanet.net and Bruce Burrell bpb@umich.edu with numerous contributions by others.

14) Can't viruses sometimes be useful? (Computer virus)

Vesselin Bontchev wrote a respected paper on this subject:
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/pub/virus/texts/viruses/
Fred Cohen has done some heavy-duty writing in the other direction.
Start with "A Short Course on Computer Viruses", "It's Alive!"(Wiley).

In general, it's hard to imagine a situation where (e.g.) a
maintenance virus is the *only* option. I have yet to see a convincing
example of a potentially useful virus which *needs* to be a virus.
Such a program would have to be *much* better written and error-trapped
than viruses usually are.

 

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