[Coco] Were there ever any viruses (virii?) for OS-9?

[Robert Gault]

Dave Kelly wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Guin" <johnguin at hotmail.com>
> 
>>I remember reading in the Rainbow about 1990 or so a short discussion
> 
> about
> 
>>a virus possibility for the Color Computer.  Marty Goodman pointed out
> 
> that
> 
>>a virus for OS-9 was much more likely, but had never been seen.
>>
>>Does anyone ever remember seeing one?  Maybe not even for the Coco, but
> 
> for
> 
>>OS-9 in general?
> 
> I remember reading somewhere about a university contacting Microware asking
> permission to attack a BBS running OS9.
> Microware set up a separate system and the college students and prof were
> unable to break into the system.
> Don't think this was in Rainbow but in a publication of Microware. CRAFT
> running rampant here, can't remember much else.
> Dave
> 
> 
> 

Kind of depends on your definition of a virus. There is no way that 
software can permanently infect a ROM based system (Coco), but one could 
certainly write very destructive software to trash the drive contents of 
a Coco.

OS-9 is different because it is RAM based. If you wrote a program to 
change the contents of the os9boot file, you would have an effective 
virus. It would not be easy, and it would be impossible to prevent the 
owner of the system from knowing of the infection.

A much more lethal attack could be made on a hard drive system where an 
entire hard drive could be trashed rather than just a floppy disk.

I'd like to think that the owners of a Coco are more responsible and 
respectful of others to attempt this kind of vandalism.