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 WARNING!!!!!
VIRUS THREAT!!!!!Disappearing hard drives... Vanishing data... Organ harvest... Contaminated Needles... Telephone scams... Exorbitant fees... Flesh-eating bacteria... Falling skies... WARNING!!! CATASTROPHE!!!! DON'T PANIC! ALWAYS CHECK THESE SITES FIRST BEFORE NOTIFYING THE WORLD AND CLOGGING UP THE NET!
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In the real world, we worry about anthrax or small pox. These bacteria and viruses can potentially kill millions of people and it's difficult to defend against them. In the cyberworld of computers and the Internet, there's also infectious agents that can cause great harm and that are difficult to defend against. Last year, according to a research firm in California, COMPUTER ECONOMICS, worms and viruses cost us more than $17 billion. This figure includes the costs associated with malicious computer codes from networks, servers and clients. It also includes the costs of restoring lost or damaged files, plus lost productivity. No one knows what the future holds, but if malicious individuals can cause billions of dollars in damage to our information systems, how much harm could state-sponsored cyber terrorists cause? There is some good news in all of this, though. Bill Arbaugh, a West Point graduate who now teaches at the University of Maryland, believes that the vast majority of computer viruses and worms can be prevented if each of us practices good computer security. But first, what are computer worms and viruses? A computer virus is a program that copies itself into other programs - it's similar to the way biological viruses invade a host's cells. The computer virus becomes active when you click on the program. Typically, a virus would come into your computer as an e-mail attachment, probably as an executable file. That is, the attachment would have the letters ".exe" or ".com" or ".vbs." Alternatively, your computer could become infected when you visit a maliciously-designed web page. If you have a virus, when you open its file, it executes a program that can do such things as erase your files or lock up your system. One way it propagates is, it looks for your address book and then uses your computer to mail out copies of itself. If you don't open the file, however, a virus usually doesn't harm you. A worm, however, is different. As Arbaugh explains, "A worm is capable of self-propagation. A single execution or release of a worm can result in millions of infected hosts, whereas the single execution of a virus will only infect one host." Worms and viruses are out there and they can do staggering economic damage. In a terrorist situation, they could do even worse. However, there are defenses. Arbaugh's research reveals something startling: the majority of worms and viruses did their damage as much as a month after we knew how to prevent them. When the worms and viruses were doing their damage, the security holes had already been discovered and patches written to cover them. In between the time the security vulnerabilities were discovered and the time people got around to protecting themselves, malicious code writers created damaging worms or viruses. If we had used better security practices, much of the harm that we suffered could have been prevented. What should we do to increase our cyber security? "The first line of defense," he says, "is run a good, well-known virus scanner and insure that it gets updated often." Many of us have been used to used to updating our virus program every couple of weeks. Arbaugh updates his virus program whenever he logs onto the Internet, and that can be as often as four times a day. The rewards for good computer safety practices are incalculable. They not only save you time and aggravation, they help keep damaging programs from spreading and wreaking economic havoc.
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"The Internet community is constantly being bombarded with chain letters in the form of e-mail messages. They claim all manner of warnings and dire notices of doom and gloom for your computer systems or for some poor soul somewhere, all of which will be saved if you just send this message on to all of your friends. Enter the world of the Internet chain letter. In the years before computers, chain letters were common and were sent by U.S. mail and required a stamp. This limited the extent to which chain letters were passed on, because sending them involved a real, up front cost in time to type the letters and money for stamps. The fact that most chain letters asked you to send a dollar to the top ten people in the chain caused most people to ignore them. Today, with the click of a button, a message can be forwarded to hundreds of people at no apparent cost to the sender. If each of the so-called good Samaritans sends the letter on to only ten other people (most send to huge mailing lists), the ninth resending results in a billion e-mail messages, thereby, clogging the network and interfering with the receiving of legitimate e-mail messages. Factor in the time lost reading and deleting all these messages and you see a real cost to organizations and individuals from these seemingly innocuous messages. Not only are these messages time consuming and costly, they may also be damaging to a person's or organization's reputation as in the case of the Jessica Mydek and the American Cancer Society chain letters. They are also illegal (See the US Postal Inspection Service information on chain letters) if they ask for money or anything else of value." (Computer Incident Advisory Capacity) |
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'There are several methods to identify virus hoaxes, but first consider what makes a successful hoax on the Internet. There are two known factors that make a successful virus hoax, they are: (1) technical sounding language, and (2) credibility by association. If the warning uses the proper technical jargon, most individuals, including technologically savy individuals, tend to believe the warning is real. For example, the Good Times hoax says that "...if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor...". The first time you read this, it sounds like it might be something real. With a little research, you find that there is no such thing as an nth-complexity infinite binary loop and that processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a time without damage. When we say credibility by association we are referring to whom sent the warning. If the janitor at a large technological organization sends a warning to someone outside of that organization, people on the outside tend to believe the warning because the company should know about those things. Even though the person sending the warning may not have a clue what he is talking about, the prestige of the company backs the warning, making it appear real. If a manager at the company sends the warning, the message is doubly backed by the company's and the manager's reputations. Individuals should also be especially alert if the warning urges you to pass it on to your friends. This should raise a red flag that the warning may be a hoax. Another flag to watch for is when the warning indicates that it is a Federal Communication Commission (FCC) warning. According to the FCC, they have not and never will disseminate warnings on viruses. It is not part of their job." (Computer Incident Advisory Capacity) For a list of the types and names of some hoaxes, please visit CIAC here |
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