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For some time they
were quiet and were minor irritants but now they are back,
like Terminator or a bad dream. And doing the same kind
of damage. Sorry, we are talking about viruses here.
Viruses of the
computer kind have created havoc with systems and data
all the time. Some are fun, some are irritants and many
are killers- enough to make people paranoid if they have
experienced them any time. They have started a fresh round
recently in a mutated 'avatar'- the Internet kind. The
dreaded Win-CIH virus fired on April 26 and left behind
a trail of disaster and the prospect of more disasters
on the 26th of every month.
This virus affects
Windows 95, Windows 98 and erases executable program files
(which carry .exe extension) and affects even the chip
level commands. Incidentally, Windows and DOS operating
systems are the playgrounds of these viruses while other
operating systems like MacOS, Linux and Unix are free
from them. Actually, this Win CIH virus is a family of
four of which three variants fire on 26 April (as a commemoration
of the Chernobyl disaster) while the other fires on the
26th of every month.
In April this year
thousands of computers crashed on the day and an estimated
Rs. 5 million to Rs.10 million were spent on data recovery.
Data recovery agents charged between Rs.1000 and 10,000
for this service. Ever since, people have been resetting
their system dates as they approach the 26th, which is
one way of avoiding it.
Interestingly,
the creator of the destroyer virus, a Taiwanese engineer,
Chening Hau was himself in business offering data retrieval
services. He created it on the request of security officers
when he was a student but is a free man today with no
complaints against him for this 'white-collar' crime.
And then there
are other deadly ones like the Melissa, Happy 99 and explore.zip.
The list goes on and we users, including the anti virus
creators, will always be playing catch up. Paranoia does
not help but some sensible measures and good anti-virus
packages will give us a measure of safety. Try these:
Do not use floppies
from unknown sources with unreliable level of security
Be careful about
emails with attachments. If someone has to send an email
with an attachment, it is better sent to your hotmail
account (if you have one) which allows you to scan the
attachment before you download it.
Watch out for the
26th, set forward the date (latest by 25th and don’t
forget to set it right the next day)
Get a good anti
virus and keep getting updates regularly. If you have
an internet connection, you can get online virus checks
done at www.mcafee.com, but it doesn’t beat heaving
a package on your PC.
Microsoft Word
has an inbuilt protection against viruses. To
activate it- click on tools-options-general and check
on the box labelled 'macro virus protection'. Of course,
some smart viruses can get around that too.
And when you are
done with all this, there is something more you can do-
pray. Because as terminator says, the viruses 'will be
back'.
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