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| Why You Need Protection |
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Feb. 19, 2004
Comparing all the computer viruses until now to illnesses we all get:
every big computer virus that has spread over the Internet
(MyDoom, Nimda, Code Red) and gotten lots
of publicity, are really just something like a 24-hour flu.
Really, they are an inconvenience for a few days, even if you get one, it's pretty easy to cure. Download a virus scanner or a little program that fixes everything and you're healthy again. There have been viruses that caused more damage, but they've never spread widely the way these big ones have. Most recent big viruses have mostly been trying to steal passwords or credit cards or leave backdoors so they can use your computer to send spam. A really malicious virus could be more like a terrorist attack--and might be a terrorist attack. There has yet to be a widespread virus that did anything really vicious or destructive. What if the next virus does?
I keep a big stack of paper, tracking how many sales were on every day. I can look back and see some days where I wrote "virus day" so I'd remember why sales were noticably lower. A virus that caused lots of damage would cause a real decrease in income for all kinds of companies. If it lasted a few days or weeks, how many companies could have real financial trouble? Pretty much everything people were worried about for the Y2K bug could be done by a destructive, fast spreading virus. You need as much protection for your computer as you can get. |
| Do We Need Good Viruses? |
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Feb. 19, 2004
Some of the worms from years ago are still out there on infected machines, still sending out
attempts to infect more (at this point, everything that could be infected likely is infected.)
Recent viruses have opened backdoors that are used to send spam to all of us (among other things). They were designed to open these backdoors for spammers or launching "denial of service attacks" or more. There are just a good percent of people that are never going to protect themselves. I'm still getting emails from very old viruses--people are still infected and re-infecting; even an old virus scanner that hadn't been updated in a year would catch them. But they won't install any anti-virus programs, they'll keep opening every emailed file, they won't use firewalls, they won't ever update to fix security holes, etc. We've got a million Typhoid Mary's. It's bad enough now, what happens in a few years when your cell phone, or PDA, or maybe even your Cable TV box can be infected and be use for sending spam or launching attacks on websites? A good virus or worm could easily use the same back doors left open by bad viruses or use the same security holes that are exploited by worms. But the good one would then disable the bad virus and close the back door. Unfortunately, a good virus would have to spread too, but it could still spread "nicely". Not aggressive about the number of connections at once, stop after finding some number of other computers to fix, not set to restart when the computer is rebooted. I'd say yes, we need some good viruses (Inter-bodies?). But they'd have to be very carefully written to not cause more problems than they're solving. And with the current laws, writing a good virus would get you in just as much trouble as writing a bad virus. |