Computers Get Sick Also - About Computer Viruses

A computer program capable of copying itself and infecting a computer without even the user's permission or knowledge is known as a computer virus. When the host of a computer virus is carried to an uninfected computer, then the virus spreads from one computer to the other. Viruses get transferred over a network, Internet or through removable mediums like floppy disk, CD and USB drive.

There are three basic categories of computer viruses which are boot infectors, system infectors and generic application infectors. The boot sectors of diskettes and hard disks are attacked by the boot infectors. During the first access of a diskette the virus transfers itself to the sector 0 of the diskette and it then spreads to the system that are booted from this diskette. The Pakistani Brain Virus is an example of a boot infector. The system infectors are found to be attached to the operating system modules and Lehigh virus is a typical example. The Generic application infectors have the capability to harm any application program. Well known viruses of this kind include the Israeli Virus and the Scores Virus.

There are various theories and controversies regarding the first known computer virus. But majority support the view that The Creeper was the first virus that was detected on ARPANET which happens to be the forerunner of the internet in the 1970s. It found its way through the TENEX operating system and had the capability to use any linked modem to dial out to all remote computers for the purpose of infecting them. There are again beliefs about "Rother J" to be the first computer virus to have appeared "in the wild" which means outside the lab or the single computer where it originated. But the truth is that, it was the first virus to infect computers "in the home". A boot sector virus called The Brain was the first PC virus which appeared in the wild. In 1986, Farooq Alvi Brothers from Pakistan created this virus with the aim of discouraging pirated copies of software written by them.

CIH and Melissa are two well known viruses which created disasters in the years 1998 and 1999 respectively. The estimated amount of damage that CIH created was 20 to 80 million dollars. This virus originated from Taiwan and Windows 95, 98, and ME executable files were its main targets. This virus found its residence in a PC's memory. Soon after its activation, it started overwriting data on the host PC' hard drive and as a result it made it inoperable. It also prevented boot-up of the host by overwriting the BIOS of the host. Although it caused disasters and losses at some point of time but it is not a serious threat nowadays because of the migrations to Windows 2000, XP, and NT which are not susceptible to CIH. Melissa caused an estimated damage of 300 to 600 million dollars. This was a word macro script that infected the business PCs. The rapid spread of the virus made Intel, Microsoft and other companies that were using Outlook to shut their total e- mail systems down! This virus used the e- mail lists of the user of Microsoft Outlook to e- mail itself in the form of a .DOC file as attachment. Unsuspected receivers opened the file and got their systems infected.

There are a number of destructive viruses like Blaster, Bagle, MyDoom, Sasserbut I LOVE YOU released in 2000 deserves special mention. This acted like Melissa by e- mail itself with an irresistible message: I love You. It even used to find the IDs and passwords of the users of infected machines to send e- mails to its author. The amount of damage was estimated as 10 to 15 dollars. The irony is that Philippines had no law against computer viruses at that time and so it failed to punish the author of I LOVE YOU who was from Philippines itself!

For more PC security tips, advice and antivirus software reviews visit http://www.antivirus-software.com

What Governments and Agencies Are Doing About PC Security

If you felt isolated and susceptible in the battle against cyber-space terrorism - virus and malware attacks - then there is no need. Numerous forces have joined together to help safeguard the nation's computer infrastructure from abuse. Just like the US armed forces guard the homeland - and indeed every nation has armed forces - there is an army of technical staff out there who have put their heads together to come up with computer security and defense strategies.

One such agency is The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). The department of Homeland Security has collaborated with other private and public sectors to respond to national cyber attacks and correlate defense. You can learn a lot about them and about viruses from their website us-cert.gov/, from which you can also subscribe to mailing lists for firsthand knowledge.

US-CERT professionals evaluate and decrease the threat of cyber attacks, interact with other federal agencies, research communities, industry and governments at both state and local levels to decide if and what action should be taken. And they are responsible for alerting the general public as to what action needs to be taken.

They are available for communication from the general public about cyber issues that may arise. You can report a virus to them and they will investigate it to determine its seriousness and find how to stop it from spreading. Confidential information may be submitted through the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program. This will be safeguarded from public disclosure.

There are many other government agencies that work to try and preserve computer security, whether their own or that of the general public. But generally it is private organizations that do the most work in creating patches to exclude new viruses or in upgrading anti-virus software. Let a new virus spring into being and a whole host of goodies also swing into action. And they soon spot ways to eradicate the danger.

Microsoft works hard to give the personal computer user additional protection. Parents can get special programs that permit them to watch over their children and protect them from identity theft and corrupted viewing. Windows Vista and Xbox parental controls will control the type of movies they observe and the games they play online. The parent can become the Administrator and allow only limited or restricted use for the children's user accounts. Instant Messenger can be configured to only allow known contacts.

Garey Simmons writes about computer troubleshooting from personal experience. Garey performs his own for his small office computers and likes http://1ComputerHelp.com

Security and Multi-Layer Antivirus

No computer network can be 100% protected from threats that the internet and attackers can bring. But with a smart IT security policy and using a layered approach, you can reduce your company's risk to attack.

Viruses today are more blended and have a higher payload than ever before. This means that they are easier to distribute and can do greater damage. Viruses today can attack networks at even the lowest level which means they can bypass desktop and server antivirus software. Software antivirus no longer provides the complete protection that it once did.

So what is layered antivirus and network security and how should you approach it? Simply put, it is like placing a defense barricade at every possible entry point onto your network. A typical layered antivirus solution will include server AV, desktop AV, gateway AV, email AV, and sometype of intrusion detection/prevention service (IDS, IPS).

This approach will not only protect from threats that come in at the computer and file system level, but will also protect your network from denial of service and other network level attacks.

A layered approach also helps provide efficiency and load-balancing on your network. If you find that your email server is getting pounded by daily phishing or virus emails, then having gateway antivirus can help take some of the load off of your email server by stopping those emails from ever reaching the server.

It also provides greater security on desktops using gateway antivirus. If a user attempts to download a virus onto their computer, rather than letting the desktop AV software handle the quarantine/deletion, the gateway appliance will built the packet stream and scan it as the virus passes through. If the stream matches that of a known virus signature, then the stream is cut off by the gateway and the virus never reaches the desktop to begin with.

Protecting your network with a layered approach is now not just a security design for enterprise networks, it is a requirement for all business networks.

Aaron Guhl is an IT professional that specializes in security. He frequently writes on his blog regarding security issues to help IT professionals get a better understanding of security in their networks. Visit his website at: Multi-layered Antivirus

Spam - The Internet's Biggest Virus

We all know that virus's cause our computers to crash, and unfortunately at times rendering them completely unusable. That's why we have virus shields and scanners that can take care of these mechanical viruses for the most part. Well there is a virus that has long been attacking the internet itself, and it is not mechanical-it is completely organic and it has a brain. This virus is called a spammer.

Spammers.. viruses? No way, you think... they just send out unsolicited Emails and are extremely annoying.

In the most general sense a virus is a bad thing that is constantly adapting in order to continue attacking, and a vaccine is a good thing that is constantly adapting to mitigate attacks from viruses. If you think about it, web services all over the internet (Google, Spam filters, etc.) are constantly having to adapt and change rules and algorithms to keep spammers on edge-but somehow they manage to get through. Spammers are more than just annoying marketers (or wannabes) that want to fill up your Email inbox.

I often wonder: Are spammers slowly destroying the internet?

Here are my thoughts on that question. Social media and many other web 2.0 services on the internet (social bookmarking/networking, blogs, etc.) are in fact good things. They allow people to express opinions, share useful resources, share lesser-known knowledge, etc. and on the other end of the spectrum other people are able to read opinions, gain more knowledge, visit useful resources, and so on. But as time goes on the amount of genuine content is being far out-weighed by crap content produced by spammers in an attempt to trick search engines, trick users (to gain money), etc.

For example, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of blogs are created each day, but how many actually end up being genuine blogs, and not spam-generated blogs, re-produced content, blogs created for the sole purpose of getting links, etc. Lets look at social bookmarking. There are so many fake accounts are there all linked to one specific person in an attempt to send their website to the top of the rankings. Social networking is the same way along with every other web service/idea both new and old-all are getting plagued by spammers.

However, in the midst of the darkness among all these negatives, there is in fact a light that emerges. I'm a positive thinker, so after giving this subject some thought, I got to thinking about the life expectancy of the so called spam content being mass produced on a daily basis. Not very long. Most spammers probably give it a try for a few days or weeks only to find that their strategies take a lot longer-which narrows down the number of actual spammers that pose a threat to honest bloggers, social networkers/bookmarkers, etc.

So the answer to my question above (Are spammers slowly killing the internet?), I think would have to be a big NO. Search engines are getting better and better at finding the real content and weeding out the crap, and the one's who usually stick around are genuine web users who are producing valuable content-valuable content meaning real content (someone's opinion may not seem valuable but it is in fact useful to the overall internet if it is genuine).

If this issue has ever bothered you, such as having thoughts run through your head such as, I'm never going to get a good search engine ranking because there is way too much competition, don't worry about it because although the numbers tell you there is a rising amount of competition in any certain niche (hard to find a non-saturated niche these days-if you go strictly by the numbers), you have to stop and think of how much actual competition there is. Most people enter a market (many of which are spammers looking for the money) and give up within a few weeks, if not a few days... but their websites, blogs, etc. remain so while it may seem like there is competition, you will actually surpass them very quickly just by being an honest web user that is persistent in whatever niche you are trying to attract traffic within.

The question for this article:

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by competition in a certain niche (whether you were trying to sell something, or just make a blog that will build a readership) but didn't stop to think how much of that competition was dry spam that isn't going anywhere?

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