The Hindu : A virus primer

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 25, 2003

National

National

A virus primer

By Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore Aug. 24. The following hints are drawn from the virus resource placed by the University of Delaware (www.udel.edu/topics/virus/v-whatis.html) on its website, with some India-specific additions.

A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on a programme you use or on certain files that automatically open a programme you use. Some viruses are harmless but others have the potential to create havoc on the systems they infect.

What types of viruses are there?

* Programme viruses infect computer programmes and become active when the infected programme is run.

* Boot sector viruses infect diskettes and hard disks and become active when an infected disk is used to start the computer.

* Macro viruses infect documents (files) through the macro programming capabilities of some programmes and become active when an infected document is opened.

* E-mail viruses can infect your desktop e-mail system. They spread through e-mail messages and usually replicate by automatically e-mailing copies to all entries in your e-mail address book.

* Worms are programmes that are able to replicate on their own over computer networks. A worm, technically, differs from a computer virus in how it spreads: that is, a virus attaches itself to another programme or file and spreads as its "host" comes in contact with other computers, whereas a worm scans a network for computers with same security hole that it can exploit to infect that machine and continue replicating itself independently.

How can one get rid of a virus?

You will need an anti-virus programme to remove a virus from your computer. A number of popular anti-virus packages are available — The best known like Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro are priced between Rs. 1,000-Rs. 3,000. Some such as AVG are free. Search at google.com for links to all these services.

Best practices for virus prevention:

1. Never open suspicious attachments — Assume that any attachment you receive may potentially be infected... Delete any suspicious messages immediately from the inbox.

2. Keep your virus protection up-to-date. You are far more likely to get a brand new virus in that has just emerged rather than an older one that is hardly circulating.

3. Keep your computer's operating system patched with all "critical updates". Windows users should go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and select product updates and then check critical updates. After applying them you will need to reboot your workstation.

4. Scan your system monthly. Set the scan to "all file" so that all files on your system are scanned.

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