VERFAHREN UND ANORDNUNG FÜR DIE ZUGANGS- UND INFORMATIONSVERFÄLSCHUNGSKONTROLLE IN RECHNERSYSTEMEN

PCT No. PCT/GB91/00261 Sec. 371 Date Oct. 21, 1992 Sec. 102(e) Date Oct. 21, 1992 PCT Filed Feb. 20, 1991 PCT Pub. No. WO91/13403 PCT Pub. Date Sep. 5, 1991An apparatus and method restrict the corruption or destruction of data held on a storage medium forming part of a computer system by hostile programs such as "viruses"by employing a "Supervisor" which controls the reading, writing and formatting of sectors within partitions of a storage medium. The control is dependent upon which type of partition the sector is within, i.e. the boot partition, or an active or inactive general partition, and which type of data the sector contains, i.e. operating system or user information. The Supervisor may be implemented in hardware or firmware, and preferably provides a processor which is inaccessible to the user and to any virus contained in any partition of, for example, a hard disk. The computer system may be reset should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation.