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"VIRUS"

This has just caused a little confusion in my brain, We all know that PC viruses have been flying around the net for quite some time now, they are a household name. New WAP mobile phones have recently recieved viruses via e-mails, but yet, I have heard nothing about viruses on the Dreamcast!? this appears to be a very high hudle and I could loose large amounts of sleep over this if it's not resolved. Do Dreamcasts have viruses lurking around their systems or are they as minty fresh clean as my nicely washed t-shirts?
Now, I would have thought this would be a big problem as the DC has lots of access open to them, they have the whole web to corrupt and destroy, the tiny little mobile phones hve only a few pages, but are growing at alarming rates. Has anyone got answers for me? please?

Opens up alternative possibilities for virus transfer, too. Unbeknown to you, the virtual memory pack you're taking to a mates house is going to infect his DC. Nasty.

Mind you, the batteries die in about 3 hours, so I doubt it would live in the memory pack very long ;)

Sega's Dreamcast internet is pretty much closed, it's not easy to access it with any old pc in the first place. A linux box (and maybe wondows now, I think) can be set up as a gateway for the dreamcast, to share a broadband madem for example, and presumably it's possible to log the activity from the Dreamcast to detect any posssible holes.

ok, I will sleep easy tonight, it makes sense that the DC can't be wiped, I would have thought that someone would have tried to crash the systems though? or wipe everyones high scores off thier memory cards! anyway, thanks for your input

reaper(DC) wrote:
> Yep, true about the DC, but it could become a proble for the PS2 when the HDD comes out

I aggree, some sega nut who is annoyed about the DC going might give sony a virus, making them loose millions.

Surely a virus can't do a huge amounnt of damage to a dreamcast, as most of the workings are coded straight into the hardware - and they're read-only. If none of the Dreamcast startup operations can be modified, how does the virus get activated? And what does it do?

Perhpas there are a few things it can do - mess around with your preferences and do evil things to saved games, but I can't imagine it's easy to infect the Dreamcast in the first place.

Iteresting, though. I wonder what security holes the DC has?

Yep, true about the DC, but it could become a proble for the PS2 when the HDD comes out

Whoops, I wrote that so quietly, no one heard. :D

What I meant to say was:

Because the Dreamcast has no hard drive, just a temporary storage that is wiped, it can't download viruses that will harm the DC. A WAP phone, I believe, has a small memory. For such things as phone numbers.

another question: Does anyone know the website for DC emulators, in perticular the place to download them?

I wanna download quake for my DC and the dremsnes looks cool too.

I've heard nothing about them.

Hackers on PSO I think I've read about, but because the Dreamcast has no hard drive, just a temporary storage that is wiped...

I think, anyway. :)

This has just caused a little confusion in my brain, We all know that PC viruses have been flying around the net for quite some time now, they are a household name. New WAP mobile phones have recently recieved viruses via e-mails, but yet, I have heard nothing about viruses on the Dreamcast!? this appears to be a very high hudle and I could loose large amounts of sleep over this if it's not resolved. Do Dreamcasts have viruses lurking around their systems or are they as minty fresh clean as my nicely washed t-shirts?
Now, I would have thought this would be a big problem as the DC has lots of access open to them, they have the whole web to corrupt and destroy, the tiny little mobile phones hve only a few pages, but are growing at alarming rates. Has anyone got answers for me? please?