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FWIW, AIX comes with a virus-scanning utility (/usr/bin/virscan), though IIRC the original version had an empty signature file (in /usr/lib/security/scan/virsig.lst) and even the later populated signature file only contains PC viruses. Quoth the man page, "at this time [virsig.lst] contains no known AIX virus signatures". Apparently we are to infer that there *were* no known AIX virus signatures. I note that my 4.2.1 AIX system still has the 1991 signature file. Even a DOS-only virus list could potentially be useful on a Unix file server, though. Provided, of course, that it had a recent signature list (and preferably mutant-detection and similar heuristics), which virscan probably does not. And to be fair there are plenty of Unix vulnerabilities, and even viruses potentially among them. David Harley, keeper of the alt.comp.virus FAQ, mentioned some "lab" Unix viruses when this thread appeared in October '87, and I recall a discussion of using crypto hashes to validate major system commands on some Unix group not that long ago - which is essentially virus-scanning technology, though not necessarily for the same purpose it generally serves on PCs. That said, viruses are not the problem for Unix systems that they are for PCs. Network security, guessable usernames and passwords, and the like should generally be a higher priority.
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Last Update May 13 2007 @ 00:21 AM