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Bits and Bytes Volume 10, No. 02 (1988-10)(Apple Computing Enjoyment Society)(Side A).zip
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Bits and Bytes Volume 10, No. 02 (1988-10)(Apple Computing Enjoyment Society)(Side A).po
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ACES.1.9.txt
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1996-12-24
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The following is adapted from an
article that first appeared on
Compuserve. The concept of "infection"
in a computer sounds funny, but
believe, it is no joke!
VIRUSES
By Peter J. Paul
We have a problem in the Apple computer
family. Viruses have begun to invade
our programs. What are viruses? A
virus is a small program hidden inside
a large program that acts to create
damage to the user's system. It might
do it by wiping out any data currently
in memory or (even worse) by erasing
your hard drive. A virus might lie
dormant, hidden inside the parent
program for a long period of time and
then all of a sudden come to life and
crash your entire system.
Where do these viruses come from? They
come from a number of different places.
The first place a virus starts is in
the mind of a very disturbed, but very
smart, person who wants to do nothing
but wreak havoc with your computer
system. He writes a small program that
usually will not activate until certain
conditions have been met: eg when a
certain number of copies of the master
have been made, or at a certain date
and time, or when a set number of
operations within the program has been
accomplished. When all the conditions
have been met, the virus awakes and
does its damage.
The most common way for the virus to
spread is for it to be tied to a
program that is circulated a great
deal. Prime targets for viruses are
public domain and freeware programs
downloaded from telecommunication
services and local bulletin boards.
Every time the program is uploaded to
another system or shared with a friend,
the virus is spread. Viruses are
nothing new in the world of IBM
computers, but they are relatively new
to the Apple world. The virus loves to
trash hard drives and with the growth
of the IIgs and other Apple II's there
has also been a corresponding increase
in the number of hard drives for the
Apple.
We Apple users are fortunate in that
our hard drives are external and can be
turned off (as opposed to IBM and other
computers which have internal hard
drives). This is actually our first
line of defense against viruses. When
downloading programs from
telecommunication sources, keep hard
drives turned off. Download onto
floppies and test them thoroughly many
times before allowing your hard drive
to come on-line. Keep business data on
a separate drive, if possible, and try
to never mix business and pleasure
programs. Hacked versions of games are
particularly good targets for a hidden
virus. IIgs users must watch out for
CDA's and NDA's and fonts for the GS.
If you don't, that new Sider hard drive
will just be a big fat target. New
versions of popular programs and
utilities are possible targets too.
Also, be careful of picture files that
show you a pretty picture and sing you
a song while viruses silently implant
themselves within your system and seek
to destroy it.
I had a 20 meg Sider, battery backed-up
ROM and 3.5" drive which was wiped
clean from a virus infection. The
following message appeared: "CyberAIDS
2.01. Your worst nightmare has come
true, you have infected with CyberAIDS.
Most of your disks are now infected, as
well as disks of those who copied or
received files from you. If you have a
hard drive then it has been infected
long ago, and is now erased. The virus
is the second in a line of products
known collectively as ExtortionWare..."
A counter in the downloaded program had
been employed to determine how many
times I had accessed BASIC.SYSTEM in my
Sider hard drive. At between 15 and 20
times, the virus came to life and did
its deed - blocks $0000 through $0006
were "zeroed" out to give the
impression that my Sider had been wiped
clean. Fortunately, I was able to
recover most of my files with MR.
FIXIT. However, there is another strain
of virus going around now that MR.
FIXIT will not repair.......
********************
WARNING!!
If you have a copy of COPY II PLUS in
your possession that boasts of an 8.5
version number - DO NOT USE IT!! It
has a virus embedded in it that corr-
upts, at the very least, your BASIC.
SYSTEM files. Version 8.3 is the
latest version from Central Point
Software.
From E.A.C. Express
********************
Editor's note: This is just
conjecture, but wouldn't virus
infection be the perfect way for
software producers to "get back" at the
piraters who spread their products
freely? Hmmmmmmmmm!
~~~