Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations IamaSherpa on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Ques converting downloads to protect against viruses

Status
Not open for further replies.

wlhaught

Technical User
Mar 28, 2002
5
US
Is there a program for converting downloads (ex: ROT13) to protect them from viruses & a DOS or Linux companion prog for reversing the process? ver. 2.00 (wlh001L-a1)


I am thinking of protecting the file before it even becomes a file and viruses that infect immediately can even have a chance.

I wonder if this may even require ring 0 code, so this becomes a multiissue matter: setup, security, virus-related, drivers, to name a few.

The idea is to save and periodically back up altered installation files that cannot be infected and data files. If necessary I can write zeros to the drive, then partition, and reformat, and reinstall with clean startup disks and tapes. Of course, the installation files could become corrupted, but that is still better than an infection.

Ideally, the programs (or plugins or controls) would also change extensions too.

I am wondering about text<--> binary decoding and encoding issues. I have been under the impression for years that all data on the internet was converted. When I started looking for a program to do the above, I found documents stating that only the SMTP protocol and most mail and news servers, not web (http) and ftp servers have trouble with
8-bit characters, making conversions necessary for mail and good practice for news.

Furthermore, I read that even MIME and HTML allow for 8-bit
characters. I am confused as to what is normally done in practice.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Complete keyword listing: Windows, installation, configuration, security, anti-virus, antivirus, floppy, boot, bootup, startup, convert, encode, program, file, plugin, plug-in, installations, configurations, security, anti-virus, antivirus, floppy, boot, bootup, startup, converts, encodes, programs, files, plugins, plug-ins, executable, executables, download, downloads

 
Wlhaught,

If doing this makes you feel secure, doesn't this make your system work double since it has to revert the file back before you can use it?

Besides, just have an updated anti-virus program installed and you should be fine.

AVChap

PS: All this techie talk is making me enjoy my decision to leave programming altogether :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top