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You fear ‘em. You hate ‘em. But what exactly are computer viruses? Similar to their biological brothers, computer  viruses are designed to propagate, traveling from
computer to computer to perform some mischief. That mischief may be as innocent as displaying a message that reads “This computer is drunk,” or as fatal as wiping out every file on a hard drive. There are more than
480,000 known viruses and 1000 or more are active.
1. A virus consists of at least two parts: the replication code, which spreads the virus, and the payload, which is the prank or destructive part. Whoever wrote the the virus
inserts the virus code into an otherwise harmless program. The program-with the virus-is distributed through the Internet, on floppy disks, or even on commercial
CD-ROMS. The most prominent viruses are attached to e-mail.
2. Once you open the host program, the replication code is activated. The virus spreads copies of itself to other drives on your PC and to other PCs on the same network. Each
of these child viruses becomes a parent virus and replicates even further.
3. A virus may remain dormant for months so it can spread without suspicion. It waits for a trigger, usually a specific date, to launch itself. It an infected computer boots or an
infected program is launched under trigger conditions, the rest of the virus will destroy the boot record or files on your drive that have certain extensions.
4. Other viruses called worms replicate and spread with great speed. One such worm is
an e-mail macro virus, such as Melissa or the Love Bug, which is distributed as an attachment to an innocent-looking message. Merely opening the message to read it can
activate the macro. A typical macro virus accesses your mail program’s address book and sends copies of the infected message to everyone in the book. This begins a chain
reaction, with each recipient perpetuating the virus. This in itself can be the macro virus’s payload: jamming mail systems with so many messages that the systems are too
packed to carry legitimate mail. Other macro viruses destroy files and boot records as well.
So, what can you do to protect yourself from these bad guys? First, get an anti-virus
program installed on your computer ASAP. Several good ones are available on the Web; Norton and McAfee are two of the best. Also, if you are informed about a virus, you
can check these two sites to determine if the virus is real or just a joke. Yes, there are some sick people out there that will start a rumor about a so-called virus just to aggravate and frighten computer users.
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