In computer news this week, 10/02/2001

The new millenium generation of computer viruses, and why they are so dangerous to your computer and your business.

I have in my office a box of viruses from the 80's and the 90's. The names might trigger your memories; Stoned, Vacsina, Yankee doodle, Michaelangelo, Monkey, NYB - Jack the ripper. The damage these older computer viruses caused ranged from simply playing yankee doodle through your computer's speaker, to actually destroying data on your computer.

The usual way your computer got infected with one of these early viruses was by people sharing disks, or copying software and giving copies of programs to their friends. In the older world of computer bulletin boards, some viruses were downloaded in programs and games. Most of these viruses attacked single computers, and the worst case loss would be all the data on your hard disk, if you didn't have a backup.

The downside of the world wide web, despite the many good things it does and the vastly improved communication between people, companies, and countries it allows, is that it has brought forth a new generation of computer viruses previously unequalled in their destruction.

I have another box of new generation viruses, and all of them came in through someone's internet connection. Everyone might recognize these new names; Sircam, Nimda, Code Red, Anna Kournikova, but most don't understand the destructive scenario involved.

Someone in your office receives an infected email. They think they're safe because they have a virus program on their computer - the one that came with it, but it's never been updated for the new viruses. Their computer is instantly infected with the virus, and immobilizes them. Then the virus spreads like wildfire thoughout your network, and suddenly all your computers stop functioning; your business grinds to a halt. You're losing money.

But in the background, the virus is sending itself out through the internet to everyone in your email address books - to your customers. They see it as an email from you - a safe email - and they promptly get infected. Then the virus propagates itself again - to their clients. Everyone gets mad at you - you've infected dozens of companies.

Meanwhile in your office, the virus begins destroying data on your computers, but not in a way that you will immediately notice it. So you may think you have the virus removed and everything is fixed, only to find critical files gone when you need them.

The virus also picks random files from your computer and distributes them on the internet to public forums, or sends them to some hacker website. There goes the confidentiality of your most secret documents.

So you've lost a day of productivity with all your computers being down, you have other companies threatening to sue you because you sent them a virus, you've lost critical data which you might not find out about for weeks, and some of your most sensitive documents have been leaked to the internet public, but you don't know about it yet. What else could go wrong?

You find out the next morning when you receive a phone call from the network administrator at the department of defense, who tells you their website had a denial of service attack last night by several thousand computers, and they tracked backwards through the IP address log and found that several of them were your company computers, and you have committed a federal offense.

If you're not using antivirus software, and updating it daily, it's just a matter of time before this scenario plays itself out in your office. Believe me, it happens every day.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230