Q. How do I guard myself against viruses?

What follows is a long article about viruses. I am writing this because of the epidemic of my users who have had hard drive crashes. There is a virus epidemic going on. I received 28 emails this morning alone with viruses attached. Some of them got through my MacAfee virus protection software which I updated two nights ago. These were sent to me by my users - albeit without their knowledge and with no ill-intent on their part. I just happen to be in the address books of several thousands of people, so I get a good idea of what the virus situation is out there.
 
If you are not already an expert on virus protection, please read on. It may save you hours of work and hundreds of dollars.
 
A word about viruses and email
 
Judging by the huge number of virus-laden messages that are being sent to me daily (28 this morning alone), I expect that many of you have been experiencing virus attacks. I talk to people daily who have to re-install the DCMS after having lost their hard drives unexpectedly. It's an epidemic out there and I thought I should mention a few things you can do to make your computer and its precious data safe.
 
1.  Make Regular and Frequent Backups
 
Hard drive crashes happen - period. You should always be distrustful of the fact that your computer will hold on to every snippet of data until you are ready to replace it. The advent of destructive virus attacks only increases the likelihood that you will have to start all over again with a blank hard drive. Backups are your only saving grace. 
 
Here's what I recommend. I will start by admitting that this is way, way overkill - but I have never had a user whose problem was that she had too many backups. Quite the reverse. My hint is to take 7 floppy disks (that fit in drive A:) Label them "Monday", "Tuesday". "Wednesday". etc - one for each day of the week. Put them in a box together in your desk. You do not have to make a backup every day, but when you do make a backup, use the appropriate day's disk. In a month or so, you will have seven backups. One will be your newest, made a couple of days ago probably. One will be several weeks old (i.e., it's been three weeks since you made a backup on Friday)   Let's say that your computer got a virus two weeks ago and it has been slowly chewing up the files on your hard drive until today, your computer crashed. There is a good possibility that the backups you made since you received the virus are compromised or corrupted too. That backup you made three Fridays ago starts looking pretty good, doesn't it?
 
Again, I acknowledge that seven backups is over-doing it, but it makes it easy to remember which backup disk to use, so it is extremely workable.
 
2.  Use a Good Virus Protection Program and Update it Regularly
 
Typing that title reminded me to update my virus protection. It is important to keep ahead of the game and have a good protection against virus attacks. But Virus protection programs really only protect against known viruses (or virii, if you prefer). An explanation of what a virus is should be given.
 
A virus is a computer program or code which tries to sneak into your system and alter your computer in some way or another. These are not naturally-occurring phenomena which our computers fall victim to. No. Some person is sitting in a room somewhere writing a tiny bit of code that could destroy all of your data next week. Why? Usually, all this pitiful geek gets out of it is to prove how clever he is. He gets bragging rights, and you get several days or weeks of lost productivity and perhaps hundreds or thousands of dollars of lost revenue and repair costs. 
 
Sometimes, the aim of the virus is to bring the internet to a standstill or to overwhelm the capacity of a corporate or government computer network. This is done by having infected computers send thousands of emails or service requests to the targeted network, inundating the network with the workload and denying the services to those who legitimately need them. You perhaps noted a couple of weeks ago that the internet seemed sluggish. That was because the MyDoom virus was flooding email providers with bogus messages from over 7.8 million infected computers. Each computer was sending out hundreds of emails an hour, all without the owners knowing it. An effective virus attack like this can render the network unusable, which makes it a cheap and nasty way to hurt a corporate competitor - or the financial system of a country you don't like (can you say Bin Laden?)
 
The way a virus spreads mostly these days is through downloads and emails. Most email viruses are found in attachments to the email message. Once it has infected your computer, the virus gets into your email address book and starts sending copies of itself to everyone in it. Some will even go through your files to see if there is anything that looks like account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. It makes a collection of these and then sends them as email to a central address. All without your knowledge. People in receipt of one of the bogus emails your computer's virus has sent will say, "look, Jane sent us a joke and wants to share it with us". If they open the attachment, they are infected and the cycle continues.
 
Viruses are also spread through downloads. They can be hidden in video clips, music and programs. Such infected files are called Trojan Horses, since they contain unwanted attackers within what appears to be an attractive gift. Most vulnerable to these attacks are kids, who think they should be able to download anything they want for free. That used to be the mentality of all computer buffs in the early days of computers. We thought that we should be able to "share" everything, and save a lot of money doing so. The early Trojan Horses cured us of that, and I am not 100% sure that Bill Gates and the other software firms didn't have a part to play in that. If I were a music publisher who saw his revenues plummet because all of my product was freely downloadable on the web for free, one of the ways I could build distrust within the downloading community would be to introduce virus-infected copies of my songs into the internet to not only take the fun out of illegal downloads but also to destroy the collections of those who had been doing this activity. In the meantime, your computer could be caught in the cross-fire because your 13 year old daughter just had to have the latest Brittany Spears song.
 
Understand though, that the creeps writing these viruses know about Norton, McAfee and all the other virus protection programs out there. They design their viruses to sneak past those virus protection programs. Usually someone detects them manually - most often after having been infected himself - and alerts the various virus protection firms out there and they scramble to isolate and identify the virus and devise protection against it and then update their programs. The virus writers also know that most users of anti-virus software update their protection on Friday. Guess when most virus attacks are introduced? You're right, Saturday! Therefore, you have a week where you are vulnerable to attacks that your most-up-to-date Norton anti-virus doesn't even know about.
 
That's the world your data lives in. Scary, eh?
 
3.  Be Very Distrustful of Downloads and Attachments to Messages
 
I hope I have warned you enough about the danger of email and downloads.  In the past, the virus attack emails were clumsy and full of bad (English-as-a-second-language) grammar, such as "This is funny - you will like" and an invitation to open an attachment which contained a virus. However, I have been seeing a rash of very clever, easily fallen for, email attacks in recent days.
 
The first type of attack has been around for months, but I am still getting three or four a day. It consists of a very convincing email which looks like it came from Microsoft and tells you that there has been a serious security problem found in Windows and that the attached "patch" program would fix the problem. The graphics, grammar and overall presentation are extremely professional and it looks like an honest-to-God message from those friendly people at Microsoft. If you open the attachment, your computer will be infected with a virus and everyone in your address book will get that message. The giveaway - Microsoft never sends those kinds of messages.
 
A new one, in a similar vein came to me from what seemed to be my internet provider. It said that my email account was going to be closed because of illegal usage and I would have to "resign" my account before it was cancelled. I was very suspicious for two reasons. First, the grammar was awkward and second, I don't do anything illegal with my email. But I almost clicked on the link to do the "resigning"   Sure enough, an hour later I received a message saying that these notifications were a hoax and contained a virus.
 
Also, for several months, I would get messages from many of my users (normally trusted email senders), asking me to update their email address records by clicking on a link. The message is very, very professional looking, but again, I am very leery of clicking on any link, and in fact, I have disabled the ability for my email program to launch and automatically download a web page. I am not sure if this was a virus attack, but I strongly suspect it, and have sent messages to those users who sent me the "requests" to alert them about the possibility that their computers were infected.
 
Now, the reason I thought this was important. I have received 28 messages offering me all sorts of services, photos, receipts and such. Many of them looked very legitimate, but when I looked at the attachment, the extension on the attachment was ".scr" or ".pif"  That means the attachment was a "script" or "program information file", which, when opened, executes a script, which is not consistent with what the message says I was being sent. The result? It was a virus.
 
I warn you about this because I almost fell for it. Reading email usually can't infect your computer, but executing an attached virus by opening an infected attachment will definitely give you a virus. Here are a few filename extensions which you should avoid like the plague (appropriate, eh?) if you ever receive them in email. 
 
.EXE  (executable files)  these are programs which can do damage directly
.COM (command files)  these are also programs
.BAT  (batch files)  these files execute a series of commands that can do damage
.SCR (script files) these also execute a series of commands
.PIF  (program information files)  similar to the above - I've gotten a lot of these lately
.DLL (dynamic linked libraries) people shouldn't be sending you these. This is highly suspicious.
 
 
4.  Make Sure Everyone Who Uses Your Computer Understands the Risks
 
Having a thorough knowledge of everything which you've read so far does you no good if your children don't understand how important it is to keep your computer free of viruses. I won't lie to you. The Internet is like a huge mall at their fingertips. Kids are trusting, which is why you hear about kids being lured into danger by pedophiles stalking the Internet. If you have children on the computer, understand that you will probably get a virus or two, because there never was a kid who didn't think his or her parent was over-reacting and who didn't think they knew better.
 
Therefore if you aren't the only one using the computer, refer back to rule #1 - make regular and frequent backups.
 
In Conclusion
 
Knowledge is power in this environment and you cannot rely solely on the fact that you have the latest virus scanning software. That only protects you from the presently-known virus attacks. Remember, some pathetic jerk is sitting at his computer trying to invent the better mousetrap even as you read this. The foregoing will help you to avoid becoming the victim that proves how clever he is.
 
Thank you for your attention. I hope it helps you enjoy your computer experience.
 

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