Viruses
By Larry Smith
From: "Craig Brougher" <craig_brougher@msn.com>
> I discovered I had picked up a virus somewhere called "antiexe", a
> boot sector virus which was making my CDROM invisible, for one thing.
> It had to have come off the internet, but whether I got it directly, or
> whether my repair shop gave it to me is questionable
"Viruses" do not travel by the internet in an active fashion. No computer can be "infected" just by being attached to the net. Virus-infected _programs_ can be downloaded off the Internet ...but the virus is not doing the traveling, _you_ are, in just the same way as when you move a floppy disk from one machine to another. The virus doesn't come "alive" and get an opportunity to do anything proactive until you run the infected program.
Boot-sector viruses, however, are a more specialized beast. They cannot normally be attached to programs, they infect the boot sector of a disk, and there is no such thing in an inter- net connection. If you picked up a boot-sector virus it's because someone put an infected disk into the computer. It can't be downloaded in the conventional manner.
To protect from viruses, never run _anything_ downloaded from _anywhere_ without scanning it for viruses. Never boot the machine from a disk you didn't make yourself unless you have already scanned it for viruses. Those rules will protect you 99% of the time.
Myself, I never run binaries I didn't compile myself, and I never use disks from other computers. And I've never had a virus yet.
Loved your book about Orchestrion construction, Craig.
regards,
Larry Smith
[ Editor's Note: I agree with Larry. It is virtually impossible
[ for a PC document to be "infected" with a virus, but it is possible
[ for a Macintosh document to be infected. Just reading mail is
[ insufficient for an infection to happen (contrary to a popular but
[ misguided urban legend). However, opening a self-extracting archive
[ _can_ cause an infection because you are executing a program. Virus
[ scanning everything you download and any mail "attachments" is always
[ a good idea. Beware of disks that you loan to your friends and get
[ back.
[
[ A friend of mine said to me once (tongue firmly planted in cheek)
[ that he always left the plastic sleeve on the disk when he put the
[ disk into the computer and he never had problems with viruses. |
(Message sent Wed 15 May 1996, 15:04:27 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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