I don't know about you, but I am sick of the hackers of this world messing around with the Internet! Just the other day I opened my e-mail and had to wade through 400 new messages accumulated over a weekend! After deleting each message that was either marked SPAM by a helpful e-mail program, or was an obvious advertisement, or had a suspicious subject line, I had a grand total of 12 messages left to read. Of course, I wasted 30 minutes of office time. When I finally waded my way through it all, a disgusting 18 more new, potentially infected messages awaited my attention. This insanity has got to stop!
The proliferation of SPAM is not the only problem with these viruses. Pity the poor person who actually opens an attachment in one of these infected messages. They run the risk of anything from a temporary annoyance and slight delay while someone in the company's technology center comes over and cleans up their system, to a major loss of data, time and maybe even their entire system due to infections such as Virus, Worm, or Trojan horse.
WHAT are computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses? They are pieces of software that can have a devastating effect on computers and the worldwide Internet community. Viruses piggyback on real programs. Each time the program runs, the virus runs and does its dirty work, part of which is reproducing itself. E-mail viruses are viruses that reproduce by automatically mailing themselves to the addresses in the infected computer's e-mail address book. Worms use the security holes in computer networks to reproduce themselves like the Slammer Worm in January of 2003, which exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL server. Worms use up computer time and network bandwidth to do their evil deeds. Trojan horses are just computer programs that claim to do one thing and instead do something damaging to your computer.
Just WHERE do these viruses come from? They do NOT just spontaneously appear. Some person has spent a lot of time writing the virus code, testing it, designing the attack phase (anything from producing a silly message all the way up to total destruction of the hard disc of an infected computer), and releasing the virus upon the world. Hackers write computer viruses with destruction in mind, ranging from the mild to the malicious.
WHY are hackers spending their time creating viruses? There are three basic reasons:
Hackers apparently lack a clear understanding of ethical boundaries. They seem not to care that they cause very real damage to real people. When everything is wiped out on a person's hard drive, that's real damage. When people waste hours and dollars cleaning up the mess caused by a virus, that's real damage. Fortunately, the legal system IS getting much harsher in punishing hackers. That may serve as a deterrent. As reported in The Huntsville Times on Saturday September 22, 2003, "Investigators have arrested a juvenile in connection with the release of a variant of the "Blaster" computer wormIt was the third arrest for an act of juvenile delinquency based on intentionally causing damage to protected computers"
Unfortunately, viruses and the hackers responsible for them get lots of media attention. To a person who craves attention and enjoys the details of the aftermath of their destructive actions, the media attention alone may make any amount of punishment well worth it.
Just HOW long have computer viruses been arplaguing computer users worldwide and HOW did they get started? Hackers first started coding viruses in the late 1980s and took advantage of rapid developments in the computer industry. The major factor in the spread of viruses was the proliferation of the personal computer. Another factor in the worldwide spread of viruses was the original computer bulletin boards. Bulletin boards allowed people to download free programs of all types, including a lot of games. People would see a game that sounded like it would be lots of fun and would download it. Once they ran the game it would do something totally NOT fun like erase their hard drive. This virus form became known as a Trojan horse since it would sneak into your computer hiding in the code of the game or program that was downloaded. The final factor that contributed greatly to the spread of viruses was the use of the floppy disk. Once a floppy disk was inserted into a machine that was infected and an infected program ran, the floppy would then become infected. So, when that floppy was used in another computer, THAT computer would become infected too.
Unfortunately, computer viruses are with us to stay. Just as civilization has always had vandals to prey on its accomplishments, computer hackers will continue to do their level best to cause as much damage as they can to the very entity they claim as their own--computers!
WHAT can you do to protect your computer from viruses? First, get yourself some virus protection software. Set it up to run automatically and update it often. Next, you need to avoid all programs from unknown sources. Stick with commercial software purchased on CDs. Remember, anything on a floppy has a much higher potential of being infected than a program on a CD.
Always make sure that Macro Virus Protection is enabled in all Microsoft applications. The default setting for this option is ON. With it running, a dialog box will appear warning the user that the file they are trying to open contains macros. Most people don't know what macros or macro viruses are and when they see the warning they ignore it, so the virus will run. Always disable macros. The original concept of macros was a good idea. They allow documents to control the behavior of the programs that created them, so that things like auto spell checking could take place each time the document was saved. But, the hackers have used them as the preferred method of spreading their destruction. It is felt that as many as 75 percent of the computer viruses plaguing the computer users of the world today are macro viruses.
It's simple to check to see if your Macro Virus Protection is on. Just open the Options dialog from the Tools menu in your Microsoft program and make sure that Macro Virus Protection is enabled. There is very rarely a good reason for someone to have added macros to a document, just avoid opening anything with macros enabled.
Another good rule is to NEVER open an e-mail attachment that contains an executable file. As long as you have enabled the Macro Virus Protection, any of your data files should be OK to open [files ending in .doc, .xls, .gif, and .jpg]. Never open an attachment ending in .exe, .com, or .vbs. These are executable files and can do a lot damage. A good rule of thumb is to never run executables that arrive in your e-mail, even when you know the sender! Remember, there are viruses that send themselves to everyone in an infected computer's address book. And, the e-mail may even appear to be coming from your friend that had you in their address book!
I mentioned earlier that I automatically deleted e-mails that "had a suspicious subject line." The following are some of the subject lines to look out for and why.
One final topic that needs to be discussed is the proliferation of e-mail hoaxes. We've all gotten them. They warn you about the doom and gloom you can expect from almost anything that you do. Then, they usually end with "send this information to everyone you know." That's the real kicker on a hoax. They WANT you to perpetuate the hoax. They want you and all your co-workers to bombard your computer support staff with frantic questions. They want to make you look foolish. Please, whatever you do, DON'T forward the message to everyone you know! If you are truly anxious about the problem mentioned, just contact your computer support staff and let them handle it. If it is a real problem, they will put out a warning. Then, when you receive the warning from your computer support staff, you can forward THAT warning to your friends outside of work. You'll know then that the warning is real and does not have a virus attached.
There are several websites available to find out more about viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and even hoaxes. You can check out the sites cited below in the reference section, and here's a few more that have lots of information:
All your efforts may not be enough to keep you from catching a virus. If you do happen to experience strange behavior from your computer be sure to record the exact wording of any dialog boxes that appear. When you run your anti-virus software and a virus is found, write down the exact name of the virus. Then contact your computer support staff and follow their directions exactly.
Good Luck and Happy Computing!
Sources:
Brain, Marshall. (March, 2003). "How computer viruses work." Retrieved September 19, 2003.
Hayes, Bill. (December, 2002). "Understanding computer viruses." Retrieved September 19, 2003.
Network Associates. (June 2003). "Resources on viruses (fake and real)." Retrieved September 19, 2003.
The Huntsville Times. (September 27, 2003). "Juvenile arrested in release of computer worm."
Virginia Commonwealth University. (December, 2002). Academic Technology Knowledge Base. "What are computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses?" Retrieved September 19, 2003.