The Virus War

(courtesy:gunaah.com)

The earthworms are a boon to the farmer to enhance his crop, ancient healers still use leeches to cleanse a sick patient’s infected blood, but no good has ever come to the world from a computer virus or a computer worm. Every year we see countless personal computers and corporations succumbing to the evil of destructive viruses and computer worms. The viruses have become tall-ended menace in the cyberspace in the recent past.

Computer viruses are programs that can infect the computer system and the programs associated with it. Viruses usually spread without any readily visible symptoms and without the knowledge of the user. It passes on from one computer to another through the internet. A virus can erase files, scramble data on a hard disk, cause abnormal screen behavior, suddenly halt the PC and even multiply itself. The worlds most destructive viruses: Jerusalem (1987) Michelangelo (1991) Melissa (1999) The Love Letter (2000) Code Red (2001) The ‘Jerusalem’ Virus (1987): is one of the older and certainly one of the more commonly known viruses. The Jerusalem virus was written in such a way that it activates itself each Friday the 13th, deleting any programs run on that day. The virus caused a general slowdown of the computer thirty minutes after an infected program is run and also causes the screen to roll up two lines. The ‘Melissa’ Virus (1999): it badly flooded the corporate networks with a tidal wave of e-mail messages in March 1999. When a user opened an e-mail message containing an infected Word attachment, the virus was sent to the first 50 names in the user’s address book. The mail was addressed from the name of someone the recipient knew and referred to a document they had supposedly asked for. So much e-mail traffic was generated all of a sudden that the largest of the companies we know today had to turn off their e-mail servers. The ‘Love Letter’ virus (2000): better known as the ‘I Love You’ bug created havoc in the year 2000. This particular virus has caused more damage than any other computer virus till date and affected millions of computers worldwide. Computer systems were corrupted through e-mail, through other file sharing systems and via Internet chat systems. The bug multiplied by sending copies of itself via e-mails. The mail included a file attachment with the e-mail with the subject, “I LOVE YOU”. The ‘Michelangelo’ virus (1991): this was a typical virus that infected the hard disks directly. Michelangelo was written in such a way that it used to trigger off on March 6th, and would delete all programs and files from the system on this particular day. The Michelangelo virus first appeared in April in the year 1991.The virus is named Michelangelo not because of any messages in the virus, but because of the reason that this virus was detected on March 6 which is the birthday of the famous artist Michelangelo. The ‘Code Red’ virus (2001): it affected the computer systems in a very unpredictable manner. The logic of this virus was that it would send the computer into infinite sleep mode. This virus is very dangerous because it spreads not only through e-mail, but also via Web pages and across shared networks. Anti-Virus -The Virus Killer With more and more destructive viruses flooding the Internet the biggest of the companies are susceptible to the risk of viruses. A minor lapse in the security systems of the computers can cost the company its fortune. But is antivirus software a surefire solution to this problem? Mr. Anand Kalanitri who is a network security expert, says that “The main function of the anti virus software is to notify the user about the presence of the particular virus on his network.The affected users are usually those who do a lot of downloading from the Internet every now and then. During this process of downloading it is so much possible that the person may download a virus. In this situation the all the anti virus does is that it gives a warning about the virus. Many a times, people ignore this warning and download the damaged file with the virus”. He further adds that to minimize avoid virus attacks, the computer user should follow some basic guidelines such as: 1) Use the latest version of a good anti-virus software 2) Use a firewall 3) Consult your system support person if you work from home 4) Don’t open e-mail attachments unless you know the source especially those having .exe extension 5) Avoid opening unknown email attachments 6) Update virus definition regularly. 7) Avoid opening links directly from e-mails. 8) Create backup of critical data stored in the computer 9) Scan the computer for viruses regularly