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Big Blue Disk 27
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BBDFSP.TXT
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1988-11-07
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7KB
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119 lines
|A╔═════════════════╗══════════════════════════════════════════╔═════════════════╗
|A║ |6Special Program |A║════════════════ ^1Flushot+ |A════════════════║ |6Special Program |A║
|A╚═════════════════╝══════════════════════════════════════════╚═════════════════╝
^Cby
^CRoss M. Greenberg
^C(Software Concepts Design)
Computer viruses have been a hot topic in the computer field lately. Mention
has even escaped the confines of the field and been featured in national TV
newscasts and popular magazines. Computer users all over are concerned that
their machines might become infected with these deadly critters.
The most highly-publicized instance of viral vexation upon computing
occurred just before our press time, when the now-infamous Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) virus crisis reared its head. As you no
doubt know by now, a brilliant, but bored, graduate student cooked up a virus
which infiltrated the Defense Department's ARPANET, which links together
thousands of computers -- including, most alarmingly, some of those with
extreme importance to the anti-attack systems of the United States!
Fortunately, the virus apparently did no harm to the critical and
irreplaceable defense files in ARPANET-linked computers; however, tens of
millions of tax dollars were consumed in making sure of that fact.
More to the chilling point, the incident pointed out the extreme
vulnerability to viruses, both benign and otherwise, of the computers on which
our modern lives depend.
As a result, let's examine just what a virus is, in the first place.
A virus is a program that is designed to replicate itself, just like a
biological virus multiplies in its host organism. The host in this case is
your PC. A virus program might attach itself to innocent programs that you
run all the time, such as COMMAND.COM or a spreadsheet program, and then
whenever you run that program, the virus code will execute and unknowingly
propagate itself to whatever other disks you might insert.
If you give one of these infected disks to a friend, his PC may also catch
the disease. In this way, the virus can spread itself all over the world,
particularly if it gets onto a widely-distributed public domain program
downloadable from bulletin board systems.
Where do viruses start? Well, they're actually closer to biological warfare
than to natural diseases. Some human programmer sets each virus into motion by
intentionally creating the program. Perhaps he thought he was showing his
cleverness, but what he was actually doing was a criminal act which can cause
widespread destruction.
It's bad enough that there may be a program attaching itself to all your
disks, parasitically taking up disk space and CPU time cycles that you could be
using for more productive things. But few viruses stop there (they wouldn't be
"fun" for the programmer if nobody ever noticed them): they usually have a
"kicker" buried somewhere within them. At random intervals, or when the system
date reaches a particular value (Friday the 13th for one reported virus), the
virus may go on a rampage, trashing data files and reformatting hard disks.
While viruses still appear to be less widespread than is feared, and most PC
users will probably never run into one, it's prudent to be a bit concerned,
especially if you have valuable data on your machine. Some prescriptions on
virus avoidance border on paranoia, such as absolutely forbidding the use of
software other than the couple of well-known commercial programs already
installed on a system, and advancing the system date directly from Thursday the
12th to Saturday the 14th to avoid the Friday the 13th virus.
On the other hand, some other less-restrictive measures can be taken to avoid
viruses and recover if one should arrive anyway. You should make regular
backups of all vital data. You should be cautious about running untested
software from public-domain sources. (BIG BLUE DISK is not public domain, and
its programs have been tested here, so it should be virus-free. However,
programs downloaded from a BBS or handed to you by a friend should be accepted
cautiously.) However, if you don't wish to subject your PC to a hermit-like
existence, you'll probably still want to feed it a diet of software and data
disks that aren't always from sources you trust 100%. That's where FluShot
comes in; it's a comprehensive program to test for the evil influences of virus
programs. With FluShot loaded into memory, you can breathe a bit easier,
knowing that any program that tries "funny stuff" will likely be detected.
FluShot is described in full in various printable text files. I suggest you
type ^1PRINT^0 from DOS to get a copy of the documentation on your printer. (Be
sure your printer is ready before you do this.) It is a memory-resident program
that acts as a watchdog, detecting the kinds of things a virus might do as it is
getting ready to trash your disk. It is user-configurable, and you can make it
screen against such things as wildcard deletes, disk reformats, any writing to
files like COMMAND.COM and AUTOEXEC.BAT, nonstandard disk writes, other strange
software interrupts, and more. Also, you can check important files against a
checksum every time you boot, to give a warning if they have somehow been
altered. When a possibly-dangerous activity is encountered, you get a pop-up
box asking you to indicate whether to stop before harm is done, or that it's
just a false alarm and the program should continue.
FluShot promotes peace of mind from viruses, and is also an added guard
against accidentally deleting important files or reformatting your hard disk
through misplaced keystrokes. You'll be glad you ran it!
NOTE: FluShot is normally a shareware program, demanding a registration fee
from users. However, we made a special arrangement to allow us to exempt BIG
BLUE DISK readers (who purchased this issue from us legitimately; no copying for
your friends) from the legal or moral obligation of paying any more money. You
may use the program freely as it is on this disk. However, if you wish
technical support, upgrades, and other services from the author, you are
encouraged to register anyway. See the documentation for more details, and
information about other products by the same author.
DISK FILES USED BY THIS PACKAGE:
^F$READ_ME.1ST
^F$TOC.
^FFLUSHOT.DAT
^FFLU_POKE.COM
^FFLU_REG.FRM
^FFSP.COM
^FFSP.TXT
^FF_FEED.
^FHARDWARE.TXT
^FMY_OWN.CPY
^FPRINT.BAT
^FRAMNET.TXT
^FREWARD.FRM
^FREWARD.LST
^FTHE_COOP.TXT
^FUPDATES.TXT