Post
by moneo » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:09 pm
I agree with Imortis, but here is a little background.
Diskettes have been notorious for introducing viruses into PCs for many years.
There are two ways you can get viruses from diskettes:
1. Via an infected executable program on the diskette.
2. Via a boot record virus on the diskette.
You can avoid the virus in executables by never having an executable on your diskettes. The trouble is that this becomes "an honor system" and difficult to control when you have multiple users on a PC. Actually, copying executables is a problem from any device or external connection (networks or internet) on the PC, besides diskettes. Did you ever wonder why email systems won't let you put executables into a download? Some people disguise these executables, but this doesn't always work.
The boot record virus, or a virus contained in the boot record of the diskette, is very hard to detect. All diskettes have boot records so that they can be self-loading. Back in 1992, while at Citibank, I wrote a little utility which overlayed the boot record of a diskette with a clean boot record from a new diskette, which was stored in the utility program. If the diskette was infected, it was now clean. This worked great for 350 users, but they had to remember to run my utility everytime they inserted a diskette into their PC.
This doesn't really solve your problem, but I hope it gives you some ideas.
Regards..... Moneo
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