It’s a well-known fact that Viruses have become a serious problem. While not all viruses are malignant, the ones that are can cause plenty of damage. They can attack virtually all operating systems, however they are most common on Windows 9x machines. The plain and simple reason for this is because the people who write these programs do it to cause havoc. The more users of a platform, the more damage they can cause.

Why do people do this? Well, it’s often for kicks and to see how much damage they can cause. And they do cause a lot of damage. You need only look so far as the recent “Melissa” and “I Love You” viruses to see how destructive they can be. Another reason is to leave their “Mark”, similar to graffiti. Just like graffiti though, it is illegal.

The two most common methods of transmitting Viruses are diskette and e-mail. While the diskette has declined in recent years, it still accounts for almost 40% of viruses transferred, while e-mail’s share has increased to almost 60%. E-mail attachments have become the carrier of choice for macro viruses, while boot sector viruses are most commonly found on diskettes.

Virus Terminology

I could take a whole column just discussing the terminology behind viruses. Instead, I’ll just cover the basics here and include an excellent reference at McAfee so you can read up on it if you feel so inclined.

• A Virus is a program of piece of code that is designed to spread itself from one file to another on a single computer. It may change all your .exe files to some other extension, rendering them useless, or may just cause some other problems. It doesn’t however, spread itself from computer to computer. We do that for it when we e-mail those infected files to other people or put them on a floppy for someone.
  
• A Trojan Horse program is not really a virus. It is a program that is often designed to cause damage. It may be a fun looking program that instead of playing a cartoon deletes your drive. It does not make a copy of itself and spread.
  
• Worms are similar to viruses. They do copy themselves, but it is from computer to computer. They require very little human help with this. Instead of trying to take over a computer and infect all the files like a virus, a worm’s intention is to infect many computers. It may do it similar to the more famous viruses by sending itself to other computers through the e-mail client on the infected computer. Unfortunately, Outlook Express is notorious for being a victem of this scheme. These are often found as a macros.
  
• A virus hoax is annoying, but it can be more than that. It generally comes in the form of an e-mail “warning” you that (insert fake virus name of the week here) has been released into the public. People who receive this message then usually forward the message onto everyone they know thinking they are “helping”. Where the problem with these hoaxes come from is that all this extra traffic takes it’s toll on the e-mail servers of the world, not to mention all the panic they cause.

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