Method and Data Processing System to Prevent Manipulation of Computer Systems

The present invention relates to the field of computer technology, and relates in particular to a method and system to prevent computer programs and data of any kind stored in a computer system from being manipulated and in particular for preventing hacker attacks and virus infection in computer systems, wherein said computer system comprises a storage means able to be read from and to be written to, and a means for switching said storage means into a write-protected mode. In order to provide improved prevention, the following steps are proposed, either during boot or during an installation process of an application program: comprising the steps of: a) prompting a user to perform a switching allowing temporarily writing to a write-protectable storage area (32), wherein a respective physical write-protection mechanism (34, 36) comprises a switching means (36) which is exclusively operable from outside of the operating system of said computer system, b) storing (520, 620) security-relevant information into said write-protectable storage area (32), c) prompting a user to perform a manual switching to restrict writing to said write-protectable storage area (32), thus resulting in generating a write-protected storage area (32), d) restricting any write access to said write protected storage area (32) in response to said manual switching during further runtime of said computer system.