Re: POSSIBLE VIRUS ALERT

["Arlen P. Walker" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

> There is a virus on America Online being sent by E-Mail.  If you
> get anything called "Good Times", DON'T read it or download it.
> It is a virus that will erase your hard drive.  Forward this to all
> your friends.  It may help them a lot.
> ********************************************************************

In the interests of technical accuracy (this *is* the tech writing list, after
all) I'd like to point out the distinction between a virus and a trojan horse.

A computer virus replicates by itself. While it *can* do damage, it waits until
a specific trigger condition is satisfied before doing so. It hides within other
programs it finds on the system it infects, which (if the virus writer is
competant -- few are) will continue to function as it should. And the damage is
done while running the infected program.

A trojan horse is a program which claims to do one thing but really does
another. The most famous example of this was a floppy disk librarian some years
back. It claimed to create a database fromt the directories of floppies you
inserted. In truth it was erasing them. Trojans have no way of spreading from
system to system or from program to program within a system. And only the most
insidious wait past the first use of the program to do damage.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 24

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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