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Surviving the Virus Plague.

While some "gurus", usually motivated by a financial interest, make the whole thing look like the second coming of the Black Death, it is still true that some viruses can cause a lot of grief.

What are computer viruses. Basically, they are all some kind of short program or piece of program code that causes damage to computers and like biological viruses has the ability to replicate itself. Related items are 1. The Trojan horse: A program hidden in a program or item that you want that carries the virus code. 2. The worm: a program that goes through the network or Internet reeking havoc.

Here is what you have to do to stay safe:

1. If you get a disk or program from a questionable source, like a friend, be sure to run an anti virus program on it before executing ( running ) the file(s). Remember, a virus will not cause any harm until it is executed.

2. In downloading programs from the Internet or other on line sources be sure of the Source. Also, whenever possible, expand and run the program in its own partition or at least a directory that is on its own. I.e. Quarantine the thing until proven safe by running an Anti virus program on it.

3. Use a good anti virus program and make sure that it’s set to automatically scan files as they are opened.

4. Either automatically or manually on a weekly or at least biweekly schedule scan the drives and the system.

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY BE SURE THAT THE PROGRAM DATA FILES ARE CURRENT. Too often we see people paying us to scan their drives when their problem was that the anti virus signature files had not been updated in 2 years. If the program does not have current files it will not be able to find the new and damaging viruses. A good example is the Melissa virus. No program had signature files for it and the Heuristics did not pick it up. Result the thing was going around the world in 2 days. A record for sure but it certainly shows the potential for damage.

6. Recommended Anti Virus programs at this time ( 1999) are Norton Anti Virus by Symantec and Mc Afee Anti Virus by Network Associates. Norton is a bit easier to use maybe but Mc Afee seems to find a few more and deal with them than Norton. The differences are small and may well not exist when you read this. Other programs we do not recommend.

Most Viruses are pretty innocuous at this time. However, It should be noted that it is technically possible to create Viruses that can damage or destroy hardware e.g. hard drives and monitors. To date however the closest we have seen are the Boot sector viruses that make a drive look like it’s broken when in fact it is not. We have had many people come in with such drives looking for replacements when in fact, it was only virus infected. It should be noted that these sorts of Viruses are usually very difficult to remove completely and permanently and they spread from hard to floppy to hard and stick around is there is no good cleaning done.

 

Cleaning them out when you find them.

1. If you find a virus in your system; a). Run the anti virus scanner / cleaner. Be sure that you’ve set it to Clean. Not much value usually in running it and watch it tell you and do nothing.

2. If it’s unable to clean the virus it’s very likely that the signature files are too old, or the virus is really new. Usually on new viruses you get no report unless the heuristic features give a warning.

3. As a favor to everyone make sure that you tell everyone you deal with what happened so they can check their machines and disks. It does no good keeping it hidden. This is particularly the case of kindly advising anyone you suspect of giving you the virus. Though, you should remember you might be off since the advent of the Internet. Even the most careful get hit on occasion. Blame games do no good in almost all cases.

   Gerhard W. Orthuber 3/99