Catching a virus is no fun. That goes for your computer as well. For some unknown reason, there are malicious computer programmers that make it their goal to hurt your computer or mess up your data. They purposely write software programs that will erase your hard drive, delete files, or replicate itself so it grinds your computer to a halt. You'll see the names Trojan Horse, Worm, or Virus, but it really doesn't matter what they're called. The end result of getting one is hours of grief and downtime, and sometimes complete hardware failure.

There are hundreds of these critters running around the PC world. Files that have the extensions EXE, COM, or PRG can be carrying viruses. Basically any executable file can carry one. A relatively new form called a macrovirus can affect Microsoft Word files on both PC and Mac. Macintosh computers are not immune to viruses either and they are subject to autostart worms, system attackers, macro viruses and nasties that attack the software program HyperCard, which hardly anyone uses anymore.

New viruses are showing up all the time too! A new Trojan Horse called picture.exe looks into directories and grabs information which it then sends back to an email address in China. In fact, there was a Windows 98 virus spreading around before the actual release of Windows 98!

These critters get into your computer pretty much the same way. You either download them from a source like the Internet, a local network at work, or from a friend who gives you an infected disk. All the viruses behave a bit differently, but the end result is the same. Your data or hardware is threatened or killed.

No matter what computer platform you use, PC or Mac, there are common sense ways to combat getting infected. There are several free, shareware, and commercial virus detectors and eradicators that will do the job. Commercial software such as Norton Anti Virus, PC Tools and McAfee Viruscan can check for and remove viruses from your hard drive or floppy disks. One of the most popular and free virus killers on the Mac side is Disinfectant by John Norstand. Disinfectant is not being updated anymore, but it works on killing most of the Mac viruses running around prior to 1999, and is still available. Commercial Mac virus killers like SAM or Virex also can do the job nicely.

As new bugs enter the computer world, the commercial companies (and the shareware developers) send out patches or updaters to their software to kill them. Most virus checkers regardless if they are commercial, free, or shareware, pretty much do the same job.

To keep abreast of the latest on computer viruses, you can visit the Web site AntiVirus Resources
(http://www.hitchhikers.net/av.shtml). It contains several sections that cover alerts, security issues, recent attacks, disinfecting and recovery methods. It also has a developers section, news, research, reviews, and a software section where you can download virus killers. Finally, it has a link to several virus encyclopedias.

If you are a Mac user, visit MacVirus (http://www.macvirus.com/). This Web site is a complete source of information about every Mac virus. You can also download the free and shareware virus killers and updaters from the commercial companies. The site contains plenty of reading material as well, including reviews of the various virus killer software products.

You can subscribe to an Internet mailing list to keep abreast of the latest developments and appearance of viruses. To join the VIRUS-L mailing list, send an email to listserv@lehigh.edu and in the body of the message type SUBSCRIBE VIRUS-L Your First Name and Last Name.

You should always be cautious when downloading software from the Net or especially commercial online services like America Online, or CompuServe. They publicize that their software is checked for viruses before they are made available for downloading. This is true, but even they have been fooled.

Perhaps the most likely place to catch a computer virus is at work. If you are on a network, one can spread through the network to your disk drive, or floppy. Colleagues swap disks back and forth and that's another common way to transfer a bug. You should have virus checkers on your computer there as well, especially if you bring work home.

Perhaps the best piece of advice I can give, is never download programs from the Net directly to your hard drive. Instead I have a Zip disk that acts as my download receiver. After I download the programs to the disk, I run my various virus programs on the disk and perform a check. In all the years I have been using personal computers, I have never had a virus.

Finally, if you spend time on the Net, you will eventually get a notice about the Good Times Virus. This is a hoax that started in 1994 and once a year it gets spread around the Net. I suppose in a way you could call this a virus since we can't seem to get rid of it. A virus hoax can be as bad as a real virus since it puts a scare into folks, and confuses people new to the Net as to which ones are real or fake. There are a lot of hoaxes : PKZ300, Irina, Good Times, Good Times Spoof, Deeyenda, Ghost PENPAL GREETINGS!, Make Money Fast, NaughtyRobot, AOL4FREE, Join the Crew, Death Ray, AOL V4.0 Cookie, A.I.D.S. Hoax, Internet Cleanup Day, Bill Gates Hoax, WIN A HOLIDAY, AOL Riot June 1, 1998, E-mail or get a Virus, Bud Frogs Screen Saver, Disney Giveaway Hoax, Internet Access Charge, to name a few.

There is an excellent Web site maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) group (http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html). The site lists and explains all the above hoaxes, and teaches you how to identify a new hoax or real warning, and what to do if you think a message is a hoax.

Another Web site that describes hoaxes is the National Computer Security Association (NCSA) (http://www.icsa.net/services/consortia/anti virus/alerthoax.shtml.

If you follow these basic common sense approaches to computing, chances are the only bugs you will get are the ones that require Nyquil.

©1999 Don Rittner

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