On July 25 2024, 01:49, andrew fabbro wrote via Freedos-user:
1. Does FreeDOS have any AV software options?
I think, any DOS AV software for MS-DOS-compatible Disk Operating
Systems should also work on FreeDOS. No?
I don't think that there are many DOS AV software options left today,
because there are no more new DOS viruses...
I may be wrong. And I would be interested to hear, if/when I am.
2. In the DOS era, I remember viruses being more like "diskette cooties"
because you got them by trading floppies. But I think you had to actually
copy software (EXE/COM/etc.) to your PC and run it...or was there some kind
of "you inserted the floppy, now you've got a virus" mechanism that hackers
exploited? I remember this clever virus
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_(computer_virus)>, which worked by
exploiting the DOSism that if you had both a .COM and an .EXE with the same
name, the .COM file was executed.
Since DOS was vulnerable to boot viruses, it was AFAIK only necessary to
access a (floppy) disk. DOS would always execute the virus if it was in
the boot sector (be it a VBR or MBR). A simple "A:" at the prompt might
have been enough, depending on the DOS version and the TSRs. Older DOS
version didn't access the disk until you ran a command, like "DIR".
There have also been ANSI viruses, which naturally only worked when
ANSI.SYS was loaded. One of the funnier stories is that it whould have
sufficed to just set a malicious volume label, and the code would be
executed by ANSI.SYS, doing whatever the command was asking from it.
("ANSI Bomb").
3. In theory, aren't FreeDOS systems vulnerable to the same virii (sorry,
high school Latin teacher) that infected MS-DOS?
I'd say so too. Only, Viruses might have used illegal/undocumented DOS
functions that are not FreeDOS compatible, so there is a change that
FreeDOS is not vulnerable to every (ancient) DOS virus...
Greeting,
A.
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