I've sometime wondered about that - would it be possible to use
viruses to fight viruses?
It is possible. It has been done. It hasn't worked.
My favourite example is the Denzuko virus - an old boot sector virus
written in Bandung, Indonesia back in...uhm 1989 or so. It was designed
to locate and remove the Stoned virus, replacing it with a copy of
itself. This virus only infected 5.25" floppies with 40 tracks,
numbered 0..39, and it would format track 40 and place the original boot
sector and the rest of itself there.
Eveything worked fine....until the apperance of 3.5" floppies, which had
80 tracks. Then the virus would reformat a track in the middle of the
disk, changing from a mostly harmless anti-virus virus into a destructive
one.
Another reason why this is a bad idea is the legal one - the law does
not distinguish between harmless and "not-so-harmless" viruses when it
comes to the issue of legality of virus writing.
There is also the slight problem that anti-virus software would have to
find the anti-virus virus as well as any regular one.
Finally there is the ethical side - and the bottome line there is simply
that this is unacceptable behaviour.
--
Fridrik Skulason Frisk Software International phone: +354-540-7400
Author of F-PROT E-mail: frisk(_at_)f-prot(_dot_)com fax:
+354-540-7401
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