Possibilties of Virus from Windows to Haas control

[chad123]

Originally Posted by mactec54 Hi Chad My be you should of talked to Haas Tec before you vented here

What is good for the goose... After your last post I did call haas and spent 30min talking with a high level haas person about this because I didn't want to spread misinformation. The bottom line is my post is accurate and hit very close to the target.

Originally Posted by mactec54 This is incorrect Haas only have Dos base system they do not have Linux

While true they are not Linux based they are NOT Dos based either. Your assumption is incorrect.

Originally Posted by mactec54 Hi Kimfab Totallty incorrect Haas & most CNC controls run a Dos based system its just as easy to be infected as your computer at home/ work by the transfer of programs if the computor is not protected with a good updated virus software it should not be used for any CNC machine controls if it does not have updated virus protection The controls don't usually get the virus but they will become corrupted & have to have a software reload or sometimes a new computer board installed

Also incorrect. If a corrupt text file can crash the controller then haas needs to work on the error handling routine, this is programing 101 stuff. Bugs happen but the code guys at haas are not inept they plan ahead for people doing things that they shouldn't.

I really am not trying to get into a internet pissing contest. I just happen to be intimately familiar with code development like this and I don't want to see misinformation or FUD spread for no reason. This poor guy has to hand type in all of his programs that he writes, for no valid reason.
If his boss says no, then he is the boss and that is the law. I can respect that, however I can also say (as confirmed by haas apps) that it is a baseless assertion on his part devoid of any risk to the haas machine from a pc virus.

chad

[mactec54]

Hi Chad

You need again to talk to Haas Tec that has to change the mother boards when this happens & when you were talking to them did you ask how many mother boards that they have to replace because they have become corupted & did they tell you the hard drive option it has another operating system all in the same control there is 2 separate computers connected together I surpose that you new about that as well & I'm sure they told you the the main Operating system is Dos based also

Everthing you said in you post was not correct in anyway the only one puting out misinformation was you & I did not say
the control could get a PC Virus But it can be corupted when it goes into an alarm & pressing reset will not fix it

I'm very well aware of the work that Haas has done to make the control as foolproof as possible so people like yourself don't mess it up & we have to come & fix them up

[keebler303]

One possible solution to please your boss:

If you use a serial connection between two computers you could transfer data between a "dirty" computer and the one "clean" computer without risk of transferring a virus. Using hyperterminal or something similar, you could send entire files over the serial port (or USB to serial bridge).

Matt

[Xenomorph]

I guess I'll jump in...
First, just so we are all on the same page we need to understand what a computer virus is. According to Wikipedia it is:
"A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive."

The key here being executable code. Has anyone ever been able to load any executable code into the Haas control? - NO THEY HAVE NOT. The only code that any use can load into battery backed up ram is text. A text file can not be executed - period. So a computer virus can not infect a Haas control.

Now on to the operating system on the Haas control. Many years back when Haas was looking at operating systems they did not want to spend an arm and a leg so anything from Microsoft was out. They did license a form of DOS from a company that I will not name but those of you that go that far back can DOCTOR up what you might think it was. Haas took this source code and modified it for their use on the first Haas control. Since then it has become a combination of multiple OS's taking different pieces from them to perform specific tasks. Has anyone tried to put a 40 gig hard drive on any DOS PC - IT WONT WORK!

I hope this puts this to bed once and for all, but I am sure it will just stir the pot further.

[mactec54]

Hi Xenomorph

No not stiring the pot

The 40G hard drive has its own computer to run it & operating system it is nothing to do with the main mother board system which is a closed system it is only connected to the mother board

[HuFlungDung]

I can see the potential for a virus on a PC wreaking some havoc and maybe doing something like erasing some stored programs on any attached drives, including, I suppose, ethernet accessible drives. But that is not the same as the virus copying itself to make a viable working copy of itself in another operating system.

The closest thing I can imagine on the Haas, would be somehow writing a macro that could take advantage of some loophole in the Haas OS. We'd probably call this a bug, and it likely would corrupt memory in the current session (and require a reboot) or maybe it could force a bad memory write, resulting in a system corruption equivalent to bad hardware, I suppose.

But, you'd have to go and actually run the macro to make this 'virus' run, so its not quite the way we envision PC viruses, being sneaky and being maintained in a running thread in the OS background. And such a macro would have to be extremely customized for Haas. It is a long stretch to imagine a PC virus being adaptable enough to make it past all the hurdles.

[Rally]

A smart routine could do some damage but in my opinion highly unlikely.
Bottom line is this. All computers have the potential to crash.
I have been creating Software for some time and am speaking from experience.

[JohnJW]

The Hd/ENet option on my 06' VF2 is Linux based, but others have mentioned, it's just the HD/Enet OS and not the CNC Control OS. However, I remember seeing a image of a newer 15" LCD screens with dll error codes, does that mean Haas is using some sort of MS CE/Embedded solution for at least the fancier graphic portion of the display and maybe for the newer HD/ENet?