The risk of viruses or worms being turned loose in/on
radio(s) such as an Orion (or any other Ten Tec Flash
ROM based radios) is for all practical purposes zero.
Even though it is micro processor ans DSP based it
really is not a "computer" at all like a desktop PC
is, in fact the Orion and its predecessors are highly
specialized designs that share nothing at all in
common with a desktop PC. Additionally worms and
viruses depend on mechanisms to propagate themselves,
such mechanisms simply don't exist for any of these
radios. Worst case case thing that someone could do is
create a bogus RUF file that does strange things and
then somehow get it distributed out to a lot of end
users, an extremely unlikely scenario. Even then they
couldn't make it self-propagate from radio to radio,
so as far as a worm or virus would go it would be a
total dud. Also they would need to have a radio on
hand in order to understand how it works and to then
be able write malicious code and debug it, I can't
imagine that a virus/worm writer would make that kind
effort or investment to begin with, especially for
something so esoteric as a amateur radio transceiver.
I don't see any risk with existing worms or viruses
damaging the RFSquared supplied RUF files either,
again they are so specialized that it is very unlikely
that anyone will write a worm to even be aware of them
much less to wreak any havoc with them.
Duane
N9DG
--- "M.Todd Miskel" <kd7efq62@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all, With the Orion being almost as much
> computer as it is radio, the
> question of viruses comes to
> mind. With hackers developing viruses, trojan
> horses, worms etc. that can go
> undetected by Norton,
> McAfee, and all but the very best virus scan
> programs, Just how vulnerable
> is the Orion to these maladies
> and how much damage could one do? With downloading
> new software over the
> net, Is this a real concern? 73, Todd KD7EFQ
>
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