Who Works at Home, Why, and How You Can Join Them How ...

GREGG KEIZER
Safe
Computing—
Protecting
Your Computer
in the Viral Age
Computers are as susceptible to dis
ease as arc we. Thai's recently been
made clear, as the computer virus
threat has gone from inconsequential to
data-threatening.
An electronic virus hides inside a pro
gram, waiting to replicate and attach itself to
other programs. Its effect varies, and is com
pletely dependent on the insanity of the vir
us's creator. Perhaps, as in the first reported
Macintosh incident, the virus puts a benign
message on the screen. Or, more insidiously,
the virus reaches into your floppy or hard
disk and scrambles files, destroys data. Al
though there have been similar problems in
the past, all under the broad definition of
Trojan Horses, a virus is different in that it
reproduces. And spreads.
No machine is safe. There have been
viruses reported in Macintoshes. IBM PCs.
and Commodore Amigas. The federal gov
ernment reportedly has suffered infections.
There are tales of infected commercial soft
ware. Electronic bulletin boards and com
mercial information systems, potentially the
most fertile ground for viral transmission,
have had to take extraordinary steps to en
sure that their offerings are healthy.
Fighting a computer virus isn't easy. You
can kill it with a vaccine that searches out and
destroys the code buried deep within your sys
tem software. Trouble is, there are few gener
al-purpose computer vaccines. Each virus can
best be fought by a specific vaccine program.
Virus, vaccine, infection, prevention,
inoculation—if all this sounds familiar,
an Apple spokeswoman, in a letter to a Mac
intosh weekly concerning her company's antivirus
efforts. Safe computing means backing
up disks and hard drives so that if infection
occurs, virus-free forms of programs and
data will be available. Write-protecting orig
inal disks is another aspect of safe comput
ing; viruses cannot penetrate physical
barriers such as write-protection. Essential
to safe computing's success, however, is
knowing the source of software. Noncom
mercial software from strangers is most sus
pect, while files from friends are less
dangerous, at least in theory. Knowing
where software comes from, or has been, is
going to be increasingly important in these
computer viral times.
Of course, the analogy between AIDS
and computer virus infection only works on
the surface. AIDS is a deadly disease that
kills people. Computer viruses, for all their
harm, only endanger machines and their
data. One is terribly important, the other
trivial by comparison.
The bottom line? An awareness, first of
all, in the community of computer users.
Few compute in total isolation. If you're like
most computer users, you share files and
information, perhaps even programs, with
others. That doesn't have to change as long
as you keep these things in mind.
Understand that virus creators are, in
fact, criminals. Building a virus doesn't il
lustrate a programmer's ingenuity—only his
or her viciousness.
Understand how viruses are transmit
well, it should. It's hard to imagine a more
powerful set of words and images than one
that has been bombarding us for years.
AIDS words, the modern Black Death
words, carry a lot of baggage with them. In
troducing them into computer jargon could
have only one effect: instant attention.
The similarities are strangely compel
ling. Infection by a new virus that, once in
side the system (whether the body or the
machine), changes the natural programming
(whether inside a cell or inside code). Un
knowingly transmitted, the symptoms of its
attack are often disguised in the form of oth
er illnesses (whether pneumonia or random
system crashes).
One form of prevention has even
crossed the boundary between man and ma
chine. Safe sex, as the Surgeon General
keeps stressing, is the best way to avoid
AIDS infection. Now there is safe comput
ted, and then avoid potentially dangerous
software. This doesn't mean never again
download a public domain program; it does
mean, however, be careful about using such
software indiscriminately. Run an unknown
program on a disk you can lose. Don't in
stall unknown programs on your hard disk
until they've gone through a shaking-out pe
riod on a floppy.
Finally, understand that computer vi
ruses are just that—viruses in a computer. If
a program is lost because of a virus, it's not
the end of the world {or the end of anyone's
life). Keep some perspective.
You'll be hearing about computer vi
ruses for some time. They won't go away
immediately. But the next time you read
about one, or run across one yourself, re
member that they're not the end of comput
ing as we know it. Take some commonsense
precautions, that's all, and you'll be
ing, a term recently used by Cynthia Macon, safe. A safe computer user. H
COMPUTE!