Classical Gas
www.classictrials.co.uk
January 2002 - Part 1
Virulent Viruses
Viruses have plagued computer users in the last few months, coming in the form of e-mails, attachments and even hoaxes! For those of you who are not, computer nerds, I had better explain what a computer virus is and what it does.
Basically, it’s a program, normally small, that secretly modifies elements of the computers operating software. What happens next is down to how perverted the authors mind is. When viruses started mainly floppy discs (sneaker net) transmitted them! When activated they did anything from flashing un-wanted messages on the screen to deleting all the files from the hard disc. They propagated by secretly writing a new copy of the virus on each and every floppy put into the infected machine. If these were then put into another machine that to became infected and so on.
The user could be completely unaware of all this. I well remember when one of the students in our office took a brand new floppy to college to save a project and bring it back to work. On her return, she put the floppy in one of our machines and our anti-virus software started flashing alarms. We quickly worked out where the problem had come from and rang the college, to find their network had collapsed that morning because of the virus!
The coming of e-mail and the Internet opened up a new way for virus writers to spread their wicked work. While many people seldom put foreign floppies into their machine today almost, everyone uses e-mail and the Internet. The first e-mail viruses came in attachments, often in the form of word or excel macros, so if you didn’t open them you were pretty safe. However, just opening the e-mail message itself activates many of today’s strains.
These e-mail viruses have another sinister effect. Once actuated they spread by secretly sending e-mails to all or some of the people in the users address book. So even if the virus doesn’t damage the computer it takes up bandwidth, slowing the Internet down and costs everyone money in telephone calls.
What can be done? Well there are two approaches. One is to use your computer in a way that prevents viruses getting into your system. The other is to accept the inevitable, that viruses are going to arrive and use an anti-virus program to discover and neutralise them.
Lets look at the first alternative. You will not get a virus if: -
You don’t put floppy discs or CE ROM’s into your computer, unless they are program installation discs from a reputable source, i.e. the software publisher’s originals!
You don’t use a mail reader, like Outlook Express and use web based mail like Hotmail (and suffer the Spam!) or use proprietary e-mail like CompuServe.
Never open an e-mail attachment or download a program from the Internet.
All this is pretty restrictive and can’t be 100% guaranteed, so even if you take all these precautions you really need some anti-virus software anyway these days. There are a number available, including free ones. I use Norton, this comes in various versions but for a single user home system, you can get a version for around twenty-five quid. If it’s configured properly, and the definitions are kept up-to-date it will identify and neutralise viruses before any harm is done.
Virus scanners offer many level of protection, scanning incoming e-mails and floppy discs, checking the system on start up and regularly scanning all the files.
Updating the definitions is vital. These anti-virus programs work by scanning for patterns of code, comparing them against a list of definitions. If a new virus is written and it's signature code isn’t in your definitions then you have no protection!
