Is there anything that could ever be done to prevent a Perl virus from running?

Well, I would like to offer my suggestions.

• Make an unprivileged user and call it "scriptGuy" or something
• Remove all of that users privileges everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE.
• Begin restoring privileges to that user on a need-by-need basis until it becomes a semi-usable account
• Run all scripts as that user
• Never run code found in the wild without understanding it or, at least, trusting the source from which it came

    Now, this discussion is going to easily turn into a general discussion on computer security (i.e. shut off ftp and telnet, use ipchains, etc., etc.). But, that might not be such a bad discussion to have.

Jeremy