From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 103376,452860c2cffef8e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-25 12:29:49 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newshub.sdsu.edu!elnk-nf2-pas!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F4A55D7.2060404@spam.com> From: Jeffrey Carter Organization: jrcarter commercial-at acm [period | full stop] org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Virus Resistive Software References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 19:29:49 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.184.33.186 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net 1061839789 63.184.33.186 (Mon, 25 Aug 2003 12:29:49 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 12:29:49 PDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41850 Date: 2003-08-25T19:29:49+00:00 List-Id: Robert C. Leif wrote: > It appears from the latest news reports, that present commercial > software, particularly email programs, is susceptible to attack by > viruses. A question with a very big payoff is could software written > in Ada and perhaps in part in XML be made significantly more virus > resistant than present commercial software, such as Microsoft� > Outlook�? For instance, would the strong type checking of both Ada > and XML schema help. The problem is more the insistence on using software that is known to be vulnerable and faulty, such as Outlook, despite the availability of better software. For example, I use Mozilla, and have had no problems with the current crop of viruses and worms. Outlook is probably the most vulnerable mail program out there; at least when I had to use it, by default it installed with most of its protections turned off, and most of its most vulnerable features turned on. Nevertheless, it is probably the most widely used mail program. No amount of decent engineering can solve this problem. -- Jeff Carter "If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate." Monty Python's the Meaning of Life 56