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Aminet 23
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Aminet 23 (1998)(GTI - Schatztruhe)[!][Feb 1998].iso
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virus
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1997-12-31
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4KB
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96 lines
@4 THIS TEXT SAMPLE TAKEN FROM ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO WORKBENCH 3
WHICH IS AVAILABLE FROM F1 FOR JUST 80p@6
SOME FACTS ABOUT VIRI
@3 ------------------@6
A virus is just a small program, written by a bored/nasty programmer
and meant to cause us users a lot of hassle and sometimes money.
There are hundreds of different "strains" of viri on the Amiga.
Basically there are only two types of virus prevalent on the Amiga,
Link and Boot. I will cover Link viri in a later volume, but here I will
tell you about Boot viri as they are the most common of the two.
Some viri can format your disk, some wipe the odd file, some just flash up
an insulting message, one even reverses your mouse controls!
So, how does a virus get into your system and onto your disks?
#7CLICK ON 'NEXT' TO CONTINUE
A LITTLE STORY:@4
Fred Bloggs gets a new Amiga and asks his friend Joe Brown if he has any
P.D disks he can make a copy of, unknowingly Joe gives Fred an infected
disk he had previously got off another friend. Anyway, Fred runs the disk
and the virus loads in from the infected disk and copies itself into Freds
Amigas memory. The virus copies itself into a special part of memory that
only gets cleared when the Amiga is turn off by the power pack and not
turned back on for at least 20 seconds. So a copy of the virus is sitting
in memory, and the original virus is still on the disk. Fred finishes
playing the game and decides to load another disk, he flicks off the power
supply for a second or two inserts the new (clean) disk and turns the power
back on.
The virus has survived as the Amiga operating system didn't have long
enough to clear all of its memory properly. Fred's game is loading, the
virus is monitoring freds Amiga for any disk activity, the virus checks to
see if the disk is write protected or not, it isn't, Great!
The virus copies itself onto the new disk. After copying itself onto 20
different disks the virus activates itself proper and lets fred know of its
presence, the virus prints a nasty message on the screen and wiped the disk
in freds drive, the disk just happened to be an expensive application fred
bought last week. This will happen when each copy of the virus has copied
itself another 20 times. Can you see how within a few days all of Freds
disks were infected? If Fred had taken a few simple precautions none of
this would of happened.
@6
* Always keep your floppy disks write protected at all times, only write
enable them when absolutely necessary.
@1
* Use an up to date virus checker on any new disk you get before running
the disk proper.
#7WARNING:@2
If you virus check a commercial game be careful as most commercial games
(and some P.D games and demos) use a custom loader on the bootblock which
most virus checkers will detect as Non-standard, unless the virus checker
says the disk has a virus and gives you the name of the virus don't try and
kill it. As a general rule, if a virus checker says the disk has a non
standard boot block then 99.9% of the time it will be harmless or will be a
programmers boot loader, if it is a boot loader and you kill it the disk
will be rendered useless. This only applies if you use an up to date virus
checker.
@5
* When resetting the Amiga to use another program make sure you turn off
from the power pack and wait at least 20-30 seconds. The down side of
this is the Amiga's circuitry is at it's most vunerable to electrical
surges when switch on from the mains.
@3
Beginners should NOT use the Amiga/Amiga/ctrl keys to do a warm reset.
UNLESS you WRITE PROTECT all of your disks.
@4
#7NOW CLICK ON THE 'INDEX' BUTTON