The Internet Virus--A Commentary

[Jerry Aguirre]

In article <17827 at glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn at glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>In article <11029 at elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> dave at jplopto.UUCP (Dave Hayes) asks:
>>How does one debug a virus?
>
>     On an isolated network of machines, obviously.  
>
>					John Nagle

There are simpler ways than dedicating a group of systems and the
network connecting them.  The most obvious is to criple the virus (or
worm) so it can't live on normal systems.  Say something like:

		test -f /tmp/worm_ok || exit

in the startup script or the equivalent in program code.  Another way is
to build in a list of host addresses that can be infected.  The code that
sets up the network connection could then take an error return if the
requested address wasn't in the list.