It Is Contagious

It Is Contagious

"Traces of the Stealth_c Virus have been found in memory. Reboot to a

clean system disk before continuing with this installation." This was the

message staring back at me from one of the computer monitors at my office.

Questions raced through my mind. "Stealth_c?" "What's a system disk?" "How

am I supposed to install anti-virus software if the computer system

already has a virus?" As a discouraging feeling of helplessness came over

me, I thought of all the people who had loaded something from disk on this

box or who had used this box to access the Internet. Because there was no

virus protection in the first place, it was going to be very difficult to

determine how many floppy disks and hard drives had been infected. I

wished I had learned about computer viruses a long time ago. What is a

computer virus, anyway? Is it a computer with a cold? A computer "virus"

is called a virus because of three distinct similarities to a biological

virus. They are: ? They must have the ability to make copies of, or

replicate, itself. ? They must have a need for a "host," or functional

program to which it can attach. ? The virus must do some kind of harm to

the computer system or at least cause some kind of unexpected or unwanted

behavior. Sometimes computer viruses just eat up memory or display

annoying messages, but the more dangerous ones can destroy data, give

false information, or completely freeze up a computer. The Stealth_c virus

is a boot sector virus, meaning that it resides in the boot sectors of a

computer disk and loads into memory with the normal boot-up programs. The

"stealth" in the name comes from the capability of this virus to possibly

hide from anti-virus software. Virtually any media that can carry

computer data can carry a virus. Computer viruses are usually spread by

data diskettes, but can be downloaded from the Internet, private bulletin

boards, or over a local area network. This makes it extremely easy for a

virus to spread once it has infected a system. The aforementioned

Stealth_c virus was transported by the least likely avenue; it was

packaged with commercial software. This is an extremely rare occurrence,

as most software companies go to great lengths to provide "clean"

software. There is a huge commercial interest in keeping computers

virus-free. Companies stand to lose literally thousands of dollars if they

lose computer data to a virus. An immense amount of time can be lost from

more productive endeavors if someone has to check or clean each computer