Viruses, Viruses, Here There and Everywhere
an article by R Lipsky

So What 's a Virus?:
Typically a virus is a small bit of malicious code that, like it's biological counterparts, attempts to do something undesirable to your computer system, typically lying in wait for some determined amount of time, while attempting to replicate itself to other host machines. The success of a virus is based upon it's ability to spread rapidly to other machines before inflicting it's ultimate damage. Thus successfully replicating itself over and over. The damage that it does can be something annoying like a box that pops up with profanities, all the way up to the ultimate damage of wrecking your operating system, or rendering your hard drive unreadable. As of yet there are no viruses found in the population that can cause damage directly to your hardware, but having to reformat, and reinstall EVERYTHING is just a bit daunting, not to mention the loss of any data that you haven't backed up. You are backing up your data aren't you?

What types of Bugs are there?
A true virus replicates itself and does damage, but there are other types of code that can have virus like activity. A popular type of computer bug is the macro virus. The macro virus is usually embedded in an office type document. A macro if it is enabled can do anything from deleting needed system files, to triggering a reformat of drives. This one can do some nasty damage and can be well concealed in a document. I would be very weary of opening up any type of Word or office document from an unknown, or non reputable source.

Another type of bug popular on the internet is called a Trojan Horse. The soldiers from Troy are waiting inside this file until your system gets tanked up on mead, and dozes off, then they come out in droves and rape and pillage your operating system. These nifty files are usually sent to you in an unsolicited email ( have I mentioned NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING from an unsolicited email) they usually make claims about making your system, or internet connections run faster, or better, and they usually state that they are shareware or freeware (yea, sure!). The offers usually sound pretty convincing, so you are willing to give them a shot, so you download them, and you launch the EXE file. When your system reboots and your processor starts to figure out the square root of pie divided by the last known prime number, your new Pentium ll starts to act like a 286 running the current version of TurboCad, you realize you've been duped, but your a bit late!

Some Bugs are not viruses at all. Almost all software from Microsoft contains bugs of security holes of one sort or another, however these are almost never intended to do damage to your system. An example of a well-known, non-virus computer bug was the year 2ooo computer bug . It was not a virus either. It was a problem that faced some computers created by shortsighted old time computer programmers. There were many work-arounds and solutions for personal computers that were effected by that bug.

How do I pick up a Virus?:
There are many different vectors to introduce viruses into your computer. In the good 'ole Dos days, just about the only way to catch a virus was from an infected floppy disk with a virus hiding on the boot sector, waiting to do damage. But the virus would usually lie in a somewhat dormant state for awhile, attaching itself to all the floppies you put in that drive, then blammo!....it would reformat your hard drive,or something annoying like that. This was before antivirus software for detection and removal. Then when you reinstalled everything on your system from floppies.....you got it again, reinfected from your own floppies....blammo! again. Then your friends' system who you just loaned you copy of word perfect on, of course floppy disk.....you guessed it. Blammo!,... you got virus!

Today, with floppy sharing just about down to a slow trickle, viruses had to find some other place to lurk. And boy did they find a doozy. The internet, with files traveling every which way 'till Tuesday ( or maybe wednesday) was a great score for the old hacker. Now viruses have a free flow to any computer system that will open their modems to let the bug in, like a swiss cheese looking screen door in the middle of the rain forest.

eMail Worm viruses-What are they?:
If you don't download anything, there is no way to get a computer bug by just reading an email. However the email could BE the virus. If someone sends you an email saying not to open an email with the words GOOD TIMES for the subject heading. They go on to say that just by reading this email your processor will get stuck in an endless loop that it'll never recover from ( or some other convincing bunk ). The more skillfully letter crafters will state that Microsoft of Intel, or some CEO from some other big company has uncovered this dreadful email virus. You in turn are so alarmed that you forward this email to everyone you know, to alert them to this GOOD TIMES EMAIL BUG. You log off the internet thinking you've done a good deed alerting your compadres on the internet, and they reciprocate and feel good about alerting all of their contacts. The problem is you've all been duped into spreading a virus....not to other users directly, but on the internet mail subsystem itself.  Another well-known example of an eMail worm, that I still show up in my inbox today, and STILL may be on many of your machines, is the KLEZ virus.

Consider this, the internet mail system is an old feeble system that has been around since the sixties, not capable of handling the strains of todays legitimate internet mail traffic. We are at capacity right about now. These scams are designed to make the amount of email documents grow exponentially every time you forward them to all you contacts, and they follow suit, thus crippling the email system as we know it. So remember, every time you see a petition in your email box for you to "sign" and pass along for all your friends to "sign", or a contest that makes you send it to the most people to win.....think INTERNET MAIL SCAM.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Important email & Spam (can I get something w/o quite so much spam?):
Email Pyramid Schemes, and spam is the main culprit compromising the internet today. Spam plagues 'everyone's mailbox, and there is no end to this problem in sight. Don't reply to these message that state reply here if you want your name removed from our list, this will almost insure that you get on other lists of people who don't want spam which will result in even more spam in your box. Instead just delete the spam, ignore, and don't read the spam ( This is the approach that I use, to avoid deleting a potentially important email that I didn't catch the first look around)

You could also try to report these spammers to your ISP or the internet authorities, however with faked headers and alternate routing it is hard to trace these culprits. You can also try to use one of the spam filters on the market, however with most of these you have to accept all, refuse all mail, accept only certain addresses, or refuse only certain addresses. Most of us want to be able to accept any mail from ANY important source ( which we may or may not know the address of the sender) so that precludes using accept only certain mail from predetermined addresses, and refuse all mail. The accept all mode is just what we had before, no filter at all, so the only option open to most of us, is the refuse from certain addresses option.....with the faked email From name header and the faked domain name, the spammers get through anyway. Oh well.

However Never EVER click on the links at the bottom of these spam emails that tell you 'if you want to remove your name, just click here'!  If you do, you are telling these people who's list that you got on that this IS, in fact, a valid email address, and Yes, I will read WHATEVER you send me.  If you click these links, expect more spam, A LOT MORE!

Also , it must be said by someone, ...please resist the temptation to forward the silly jokes around the country "willy-nilly", as well as resist the temptation to use the REPLY TO ALL button.

How do I get rid of a Virus? Back in the good old DOS days, users would notice a virus by having it crash there systems, eat their data, or run whatever ours was designed by the manufacturer, usually infecting other systems, by attaching itself via the boot sector of a shared floppy disk ( that was the only vector for these primitive digital organisms).

Then the user would have to reformat the drive, reinstall their system, and applications, and restore their data. (all of which probably would have taken less then one half the time it takes to install windows today...but that's progress for 'ya) .

Today the same could be true if you don't catch the virus in time. But if you are lucky enough to find the virus with your anti virus software ( providing you were unlucky enough to get the bug in the first place) then most times your system will be saved, providing you have good software that can isolate and remove the virus from your systems. If you don't have one, you should probably get one, and if you don't want one, you should probably consider how much time and effort it would take you to reformat your drive, reinstall your operating system, reinstall all your data, and try and make the whole thing work together again. Get some good software.

Ok, ... So How do I NOT get Viruses?:
You cant get a virus by simply reading a text based email. You can't get a virus by opening a web page. Even if the site has some sort of rogue java script in it, java is usually well isolated in it's own system to do much of any harm. ActiveX con trolls are starting to hit their stride in web pages, because it's a faster system then java. However the potential for a malicious coder to do damage to your files through activex controls is greater than with java. As of this writing there is no known reports of any viruses perpetrated on unwitting systems through this vector, so you shouldn't be scared to open a web page just yet.......I'll let you know when to be scared, then you can be very scarred.

Using your head in cyberland is your best defense to not catching one of the digital bugsters. NEVER download anything from an unsolicited email, or from an unknown source. Also you need a good antivirus utility and KEEP IT UPDATED, new viruses could be getting out all the time, so these utilities will only work if you keep them updated.

A good idea is to back up all your critical data, even if a virus never infests your drive, there is a mathematical chance that your system will be subject to corrupt data or a hard drive crash as your system gets older. Data is the part of your system that is the least expensive, but is the most valuable. Anything else you loose or gets broken, can be replace, data, most often times is irreplaceable. So Back up your data and never be scared of computing again!

Should I be scarred?:
The truth of the matter is that for as many computer viruses are out there, there are only a relatively small number found in the wild, on the internet, and an even smaller number are seriously destructive, but as technology advances so does the resources available to the 15 year old angry young hacker. The number of viruses out there will only increase. So we as careful computer users and administrators have to constantly be on the look-out.

I wouldn't go as far as to state that the virus scare is completely the handiwork of corporate american greed to sell billions of copies of expensive antivirul software, that constantly must be upgraded, sometimes at a cost, to even be effective. This software bogs down even the latest and most expensive hardware, leading us to upgrade and buy more expensive hardware to have a computer that was just as fast before we installed the antivirus ware utility. I'm not saying that this is the cause of viruses, but BS makes the world go 'round so why not the cyberworld?

Now I would never advocate the mass dumping of virus software. Just as it would be ridiculous for someone to say I live in an area rarely affected by Aids so I won't use a condom. Viruses, no matter how small and insignificant in numbers, do exist in the wild. There are ways to keep your computer safe from the malicious exploits of some psychotic hacker.

If you should need assistance eradicating bugs on your system click here and explain your problem on the message board ,
or you reach an IT Professional on the phone at
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If you prefer, you can eMail at Lipco@aol.com.

...continued next month.

*Rich Lipsky is the owner and operator of ComputerHelp911.com, a local company that specializes in solving computer problems for local residents and businesses since 1995.
Rich is available for questions, or for
consultation. You can reach him at:

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