All Bets Are Off - 5/13/2002

Internet Viruses
By Jon

Computer viruses infect millions of computers worldwide each year, and individual Internet active computers can receive numerous bugs and worms in a week's time. There are more than 10,000 known Internet viruses and over 200 new ones are discovered every month. They can eat up files and even make it impossible to boot your computer. Viruses come in all different forms and intensities, but none of them are easy to detect without an anti-virus program. If Internet viruses are so bad than why would someone write one? Hopefully this article will show you just how bad they can be and how to get rid of nasty bugs and worms that can eat up your system. 

One common misconception is that the only way you can get viruses is through e-mails and downloads. Viruses can be tucked away into web pages, especially if they have pictures and/or any other type of executable content. The first time you view a web page your computer saves any pictures or banners it may contain into a folder called Temporary Internet Files so that the next time you view that page you won't have to wait for those pictures to upload, which makes the site load faster. Since these files are saved to your computer, they are an easy way for viruses to end up in your system. Someone could write a virus program that would be hidden inside a picture on a web page, that, when saved to your computer, would execute and unleash a virus. This just shows that being careful about what e-mails you open and what programs you download isn't always enough. You can receive Internet Viruses just by surfing the net. People don't just put viruses on their personal sites for people to get; hackers can put a virus on a well-known, legitimate site without its designers even knowing it.

A computer virus can do anything from just bringing up annoying messages to disabling a computer permanently. The people who make viruses like to make other people's lives miserable, but they do it in different degrees. Sometimes an Internet virus won't even do a thing to your computer but fill up disk space and use up resources. The worst types of viruses are the kind that delete files and make it almost impossible to use your computer. Many times hackers do this by creating a virus that, when executed, will mess with your computer's registry entries. The registry contains files essential to just starting up your computer. Whenever you install a program it will place an entry into the registry that will tell the computer how to deal with it. The registry can be very complicated, and deleting just one file can make it so certain programs don't work or even make it impossible to boot Windows. 

Other Internet viruses delete files from your computer. There are bugs that will delete everything on your hard disk, which is where everything is stored (even the registry). Others will just delete everything in a certain folder. I was reading about a bug the other day that rearranged all of your files into bogus folders all over your computer, making it almost impossible to recover everything. There is a virus that deletes single files slowly called a worm. A worm is particularly dangerous because it is not always easy to tell that you have one. The one largest sign that you have a worm is that programs that used to work stop working and come up with errors that say that they are missing a certain file, or you just start noticing that files you have made are no longer there. These types of viruses are fairly easy to deal with if you notice them right away (unless they deleted everything at once), but if they are in your system for a while they can do permanent damage. 

So what is the best way to get rid of a virus? All computer stores sell anti-virus programs that will scan your computer for viruses and fix the problems (or delete the infected files). Obviously some work better than others do. I have found that McAfee is the best and most user friendly anti-virus with features such as allowing you to schedule an automatic scan, so you can scan your computer while you are not home. For the second best anti-virus I would have to say Norton takes that spot. Norton has been around for a while and has some great features, but since it is so popular hackers specifically focus on Norton and try to make viruses that will get through it. If you are running Windows 98 or Windows 98 SE on your computer you might not want to install McAfee, because that version of windows comes with Norton anti-virus. Even though McAfee is better, it is very hard to fully rid your computer of the version of Norton that comes with 98. If you install McAfee without uninstalling Norton there can be compatibility problems that can really screw up your machine. There are other anti-viruses besides McAfee and Norton, but if you think you need one you should probably go with the best. 

What I want to know is why people make Internet viruses at all? It is obvious that they think it is either fun or cool to see that they have destroyed someone's computer, and I guess there is some fame involved in destroying mass amounts of systems or by hitting a big company, but I just don't understand why someone who can write viruses doesn't get a job as a computer programmer or an engineer. Those are well-paying jobs, and they obviously have the skills to get them. Internet viruses are often very complicated programs, so if the people who make them just used their skills to get a job, they could be quite successful. It isn't likely that there will be a day when there are no viruses on the Internet, in fact, as long as there is an Internet someone will want to hack into it. Setting up filters and watching what you do on the Internet just is not enough these days, so if you use the Internet at all, it doesn't matter how much, you should protect your computer with anti-virus software. I guess we all just need to face the fact that viruses are out there and the people who make them aren't about to stop.

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