COMPUTER VIRUSES
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- What is a virus?
- The internet means that we have the wonderful
priviledge of being able to communicate with anyone in the world, but
such freedom and openness can be abused by people who dont understand
that rights and dutys go together. One such abuse is viruses (oops:
should that be virii?).
What are they and are they bad? A virus is a bad piece of computer code
which is most often spread by email. The bad code does things to your
computer that you would very much rather they didnt, like delete your
files, send your files to bad people overseas, laugh at you using pretty
graphics, and sometimes they do nothing at all except spreading themselves--just
for the thrill of seeing how far their handiwork can spread around the
globe! There are over 60,000 known viruses with several dozen more invented
everyday.
Lets get one thing clear, virii are the product of very bored but very
smart minds, computer geeks, that have found loopholes and weaknesses
in the software you use. However, fortunately they do tend to have some
ethics, and the kind of virii that destroy computers, erase hard drives
etc is very very very rare. Now is not the time to panic!
How do they work?- The reason they are
called viruses is simply that they attach to your computer like a parasite
and thereafter reproduce by sending themselves to lots of people in
your address book. They can survive on your computer and reproduce pretty
much without you knowing it.
One major effect of virii, owing to the exponential growrate ( 1 becomes
10 becomes 100 becomes 1000) is the vast volume of email that many virii
generate. This can in turn slow the internet down to a crawl overnight.
This is actually a bit like life. What we see is that we must all exercise
care to protect both ourselves and the collective internet. The internet
is a thing that we all own, not unlike motorways. If we take care of
it, it will take care of us! So a little bit of virus awareness is a
good thing.
- What
can they do to me?
- Youll be pleased to
know that a virus CANNOT destroy your computer. Phew!
Ah, but they most certainly can affect your software. To get a little
perspective on this, the worst they can do is delete all your software
(which is what, about 2-3 hours of your time to reinstall, no big deal)
and all your files (ok, so you 'backed up' right?). But stop a mo and
have a think about this. If the goal of the virii is to reproduce, how
is it going to do that on a computer with no software, and thus no ability
to connect to the internet? It's not, right! Nonetheless they can still
make your life, er, a bit unpleasant.
- Does antivirus
software work?
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- Good current up to date antivirus software can
help significantly. But such software is always one step behind the
creation of new viruses. Even major corperates with state of the art
antivirus gear get caught out. As with anything prevention is the best
cure, and you can do this this by having a basic understanding of virii.
- Uhuh, so how do
I get infected?
- Although they can come via floppy disks that have
been used on an infected computer, mostly they come via email. And virii
from email, contrary to some advice, only comes as an email attachment.
If your incoming email message has no attachments then there is NO chance
of getting infected.
What do they look like? One of the odd things about virus emails is
that they are often comfortingly familiar looking. They will usually
be from a friend or someone that you have emailed at some point in the
past. No...your friend didnt actually send it, your friends computer
send it!
Now if your message does have an attachment, it gets a bit more complicated.
The simple malicious attachment approach will be an 'executable' program
of some sort, which relies on you clicking on the attachment link to
open it. It then executes, infects, and continues on its merry path
to havoc. These virus attachments have filenames, with possibly harmless
sounding names but always have a dodgy suffix ( like filename endings
with .bat or .com
or .pif or .vbs).
There is also a kind that doesnt rely on you clicking on the attachment.
They work by a HTML email (one with formatting allowed). This works
the same as being emailed an embedded sound file, the HTML code just
says start the attachment now. If that attachment is a virus then simply
reading the email will infect you. These type are less frequent, as
they exploit security weaknesses of email programs. One particular popular
email program which shall remain nameless is dodgy, and while the company
often releases 'patches' or fixes for the problems, many people use
old software, and the problem goes on.
- The virus checklist
- Ok that last bit is pretty technical, so we have
developed a simple 3 point Virus Check List as follows. If the answer
to any of these 3 questions is yes, then be on virus alert.
1. Is the email from someone familiar, but there's something vaguely
not quite right about it?
2. Does the attachment have an unfamiliar suffix **
3. Is my email program, an unsafe version? (ask someone how
to tell, and how to fix it)
[ ** most people will only have a need to receive word processor
files (suffix for Word is .doc
WordPerfect .wpd ) or images
( Jpeg .jpg ) . If you see no filename
suffixes, get someone to fix that for you or do it yourself ( any folder:
view | (folder) options | view | uncheck hide
file extensions of known filetypes, or similar wording) ]
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- Virus hoaxes
- On the virus theme we need to also mention hoaxes,
because these at times are more problematic and numerous than the viruses
themselves! A virus hoax is an email that goes like this: "I just
heard about a particularly nasty new virus called [name] . It has an
attachment called [filename] and when you click on it which will erase
your whole hard drive. This is legit, I checked it out with [insert
respectable sounding computer company] . Please forward this email to
everyone in your address book." or words to that effect. They pretty
much all have a similar ring. DO NOT forward such emails to anyone.
These emails are just another kind of virus propagated not by computers
but by people! They cause the same traffic jams that virii do. Three
clues to such hoaxes are:
-original author is a hypey sounding amercian stranger, (but again you
are most likley to get it forwarded from your friends)
- the wording "send to absolutely everyone you know" is a
sure sign of a hoax.
- no link provided to a good antivirus website like www.symantec.com
(each new virus gets a page about it so people know how to handle it)
One bad variation on the hoax email is one that offers a suggested remedy,
usually along the lines of "do a search for xyz file and delete
it". These are usually important windows files, and you will end
up disabling you own computer!!! You have been warned.
So what DOES one do with these emails? Place direct into 'file 13',
delete, trash, biff, ridomoso, destroy. If you really want to do a good
deed, go to the above website, do a search for the name of the false
virus or filename, locate the page about the hoax. Then write to the
person who sent it to you and tell them it is a hoax, quoting the link
to the virus symantec virus database, suggesting politely they might
like to exercise the file 13 option themselves.
- Help, Im infected
- "I opened some joke program someone sent
me and my PC has gone crazy, help...what do i do?".
The answer is dont connect to the internet until you have cleaned it
out. Then either go out and buy new antivius software and follow the
instructions, OR use a friends computer to visit the symantec site above
and there you will find instructions on how to remove the virus manually.
The latter approach does require resonable familiarity with computers.
And hey dont do it again!
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