In computer news this week (05/17/01)

In the 50's we had air raid drills, now we should have virus drills ..

"Ok children - under your desk !" Back in the 50's I can remember my teacher saying that, as part of an air raid drill. We would then quickly crawl under our desks and be very quiet, until the teacher told us it was safe to come out again. I guess this was necessary because we feared Russian bombers might someday fly over our school. I'm not sure what protection theold school roof and our small wooden desks would provide against bombs, but somebody thought it was a good idea to practice.

Today the internet is filled with the modern day equivalent of bombers, or people who can do extreme damage to you and your computer. Every time you log on to the internet, you have to be in a defensive position to protect yourself against the many dangers out there. Defensive surfing you might call it.

This week's huge virus is called the homepage virus, and it's struck thousands of users. You might receive an email from someone you know - you recognize the email address., The subject of the email says Homepage, and there's a short message that says "Hi - you've got to see this homepage - it's really cool ". And you notice there's an attachment with the email, that's entitled homepage.html.vbs. You think you recognize the homepage.html as a webpage address, so you click on it. But in a few seconds, instead of being taking to the really cool home page the email promised, you're actually taken to a porno site on the internet. And even worse, you notice your computer seems to be sending email to everyone in your addressbook, and you can't stop it. You have just flunked your virus drill.

This weeks virus threat, the homepage virus, was again created by a hacker with no computer programming knowledge - just like the anna kournivova virus creator. These hackers just download a free virus creation kit off of any of dozens of internet sites, and then run a simple program to create a virus. Then they release it on the internet. Sometimes they get caught, and usually nothing happens to them. Meanwhile internet sites are flooded with emails the virus generates, and the people hit by virus have to spend time and money cleaning it off their computers.

Let's review what you should have done in the virus drill. First of all, despite who it came from - you should have been suspicious. Unfortunately every attachment today is suspect from anyone. Second, you might have done a little reality testing, and asked your self if the person who sent you this email would really be talking to you about cool homepages - would they actually be creating home pages - would they be surfing the net doing nothing but looking at other people's homepages - and would they actually use the term "cool" to describe a homepage. We used the term "cool" in the 50's. Maybe this word should arouse suspiction.

Third, the name of the attachment itself should have been a red flag to you - because the filename ended in .vbs - meaning visual basic script - meaning if you click on it to open it - it is going to automatically execute and do something bad to your computer.

The 4^th step to this virus drill would be to delete this email without opening it - and then send an email back to the originator asking them if they know they are spreading viruses. Chances are they won't have a clue.

Two things you can do to prevent this new generation of viruses is to download the free security patches for Outlook mail from the Microsoft website, and to disable the windows scripting host - a function that comes enabled in windows and which makes you immediately vulnerable.

So the next time you're on the internet, and you hear that Familiar voice saying "You've got mail" or "Mailcheck" or whatever, remember it's time to start your virus drill, and protect yourself.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney