Omnimaga
Calculator Community => TI Calculators => TI-BASIC => Topic started by: CalcMax on August 31, 2019, 09:35:43 pm
-
Whenever I am browsing the TI-83+/84+ section on ticalc.org, I always see some sorts of "anti-virus" programs. Are those just snake oil? AFAIK, TI-BASIC doesn't give you sufficient permissions to scan a calc for "viruses". I personally believe that such software is placeboware, but I'd like to here what the rest of the calculator community thinks...
-
Placeboware... basically every antivirus software ever made :p
Back to the question, TI-Basic does not have the capacity to scan a program, even by name. So yes, they're just trolly, cool-looking things, that in reality do nothing.
My Blast File Integrity Software program does actually scan programs and appvars for user-contributed strings of malicious code, and retains checksums and file sizes to see if a file has changed, but this is more akin to a file integrity software than a malware scan. It's also written in C, which compiles into assembly, hence why it CAN do this.
Aside, considering the current impossibility of getting a "virus" on your calculator, all of these programs, including mine, are completely superficial. However, as the capabilities of these things improve, a time may arise when they may be at least partially useful.