| The Eurasier - a pure-bred dog - a family dog |
| A Collection of the "Beasts" and Background Information | ||
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| Safety Measures | ||
| Up to date Virus Reports | ||
Viruses are destructive programmes that can damage software, data, and internal procedures. Viruses consist of normal instructions and can basically be programmed in any computer language. But, they are special because the virus code is not an individual programm, similar to a parasite it is rather integrated into another programme. Once this programme is started, the virus code will be triggered and come to life, continuously causing further infections and/or defects. The damage caused by a virus can be anything starting from simple animations on the screen up to the destruction of all programmes, files, data, disks and hard drives.
State-of-the-art office-packages (MS-Word, Excel etc.) enable the integration of so-called macros into documents; macros are small auxilliary programmes designed to support the user. Unfortunately, these macros can become the carriers of viruses. Typically, a virus will nest into the document that was just being produced and it may also sneek into the standard document (NORMAL.DOT). Examples for the destructive functions of macro-viruses are modifications of text or blocking access to documents by using an unknown password.
Worms are similar to viruses, only they do not rely on humans to forward infected data or disks from one computer to the other; instead, they use the network connections of infected computers actively and all by themselves in order to infect many other computers. Recent examples were happy99, Melissa the ExploreZip-Worm, or the Lovebug-Virus that attaches itself as a file to emails and sends itself to the addesses found in address books. These mails are sent en mass and can overload mail servers and bring them to a full stop.
A decisive feature of these email-worms is that the virulent news contained in the mail does not just consist of a simple text that is read passively, but it has an attachment containing the active and virulent ingredient.
Up to recently email-worms became active only by double clicking the attachment. This is no more the case as new worms (i. e. W32.Blaster.Worm, well known as Lovesan) no longer need this "user support". The more important are Safety Measures as laid out below as well as an up-to-date anti virus scanner and/or an effective firewall. What about reducing your curiosity of collecting each and every new piece of software?
As a deception measure, worms do "spoofing", i.e. they pick up real addresses and use these to send out infected files.
Trojans are programmes that make the impression as if they had a certain desired function, but, once started, they show their true face as they mostly have a very malicious function. In contrast to viruses and worms, Trojans cannot multiply on their own. Most Trojans have interesting sounding names (STARTME.EXE) that should lure people to start the programme. Shortly after the start, Trojans then become active and have impact on the computer. A special kind of Trojan is a dropper. A dropper drops viruses, which means it implants viruses into the computer.
Increasingly, false virus warnings are spread on the internet, so-called "virus hoaxes". In this case, there is no real virus present, only a warning that should give the impression there would be a virus. Unlike real computer viruses, hoaxes do not cause any immediate damage. But the sender of a hoax tries to persuade people to send off warnings to many, many others, telling them to delete certain system programmes manually. So the damage caused by a hoax is actually done by the operator of the computer himself.
Such a "virus-warning", the hoax, must be deleted immediately and must not be sent to others, as the e-mail-systems would be overloaded and eventually blocked. That is the real damage the anonymous person behind the hoax is trying to create.
The most common reasons for the "disfunctioning" of computers are simple mistakes of the operator or user, not taking sufficient precautions against viruses (e.g. the installed software against viruses is not updated regularly once a week and/or an automatic update - "LiveUpdate" - was not purchased) as well as false reactions of the operator when confronted with viruses, hoaxes or worms.
As a precaution, the following safety measures can be recommended:
Keep your eyes open in connection with emails
Regarding computer viruses, incoming emails are the greatest threat for your computer. By applying the following safeguards most computer viruses can be found:
Safe computing concerning Downloads from the Internet
Software and single files downloaded from the internet are also a very important source for spreading computer viruses and Trojans, for spying on the data of users, forwarding, changing or deleting it.
Amongst others, the following companies who develop virus protection software offer information on their website about virus protection, up to date reports, tools to remove viruses and virus defintions:
Also non-profit organisations offer asssistance and information about virus protection (sorry, this information is only in German):