Released on: March 21, 2008, 4:12 am

Press Release Author: Sonia Sood

Industry: Computers

Press Release Summary: Feel Free to reprint this article in newsletters and on
websites, with resource box included. If you use this article, please send a brief
message to let me know where it appeared:
Your computer is as slow as molasses. Your mouse freezes every 15 minutes, and that
Microsoft Word program just won't seem to open.



Press Release Body:
Feel Free to reprint this article in newsletters and on websites, with resource box
included. If you use this article, please send a brief message to let me know where
it appeared:
Your computer is as slow as molasses. Your mouse freezes every 15 minutes, and that
Microsoft Word program just won't seem to open.

You might have a virus.

Just what exactly is a virus? What kind is in your computer? How did it get there?
How is it spreading and wreaking such havoc? And why is it bothering with your
computer anyway?

Viruses are pieces of programming code that make copies of themselves, or replicate,
inside your computer without asking your explicit written permission to do so.
Forget getting your permission down on paper. Viruses don't bother to seek your
permission at all! Very invasive.

In comparison, there are pieces of code that might replicate inside your computer,
say something your IT guy thinks you need. But the code spreads, perhaps throughout
your office network, with your consent (or at least your IT guy's consent). These
types of replicating code are called agents, said Jimmy Kuo, a research fellow with
McAfee AVERT, a research arm of anti-virus software-maker McAfee Inc.

In this article, though, we're not talking about the good guys, or the agents. We'll
be talking about the bad guys, the viruses.

A long, long time ago in computer years, like five, most viruses were comprised of a
similar breed. They entered your computer perhaps through an email attachment or a
floppy disk (remember those?). Then they attached themselves to one of your files,
say your Microsoft Word program.

When you opened your Microsoft Word program, the virus replicated and attached
itself to other files. These could be other random files on your hard drive, the
files furthest away from your Microsoft Word program, or other files, depending on
how the virus writer wanted the virus to behave.

This virus code could contain hundreds or thousands of instructions. When it
replicates it inserts those instructions, into the files it infects, said Carey
Nachenberg, Chief Architect at Symantec Research Labs, an arm of anti-virus
software-maker Symantec. Corp.

Because so many other types of viruses exist now, the kind just described is called
a classic virus. Classic viruses still exist but they're not quite as prevalent as
they used to be. (Perhaps we could put classic viruses on the shelf with Hemingway
and Dickens.)

These days, in the modern era, viruses are known to spread through vulnerabilities
in web browsers, files shared over the internet, emails themselves, and computer
networks.

As far as web browsers are concerned, Microsoft's Internet Explorer takes most of
the heat for spreading viruses because it's used by more people for web surfing than
any other browser.

Nevertheless, "Any web browser potentially has vulnerabilities," Nachenberg said.

For instance, let's say you go to a website in IE you have every reason to think is
safe, Nachenberg said.

But unfortunately it isn't. It has virus code hidden in its background that IE isn't
protecting you from. While you're looking at the site, the virus is downloaded onto
your computer, he said. That's one way of catching a nasty virus.

During the past two years, another prevalent way to catch a virus has been through
downloads computer users share with one another, mostly on music sharing sites, Kuo
said. On Limewire or Kazaa, for instance, teenagers or other music enthusiasts might
think they're downloading that latest Justin Timberlake song, when in reality
they're downloading a virus straight into their computer. It's easy for a virus
writer to put a download with a virus on one of these sites because everyone's
sharing with everyone else anyway.

Here's one you might not have thought of. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express to
send and receive email, do you have a preview pane below your list of emails that
shows the contents of the email you have highlighted? If so, you may be putting
yourself at risk.

Some viruses, though a small percentage according to Nachenberg, are inserted
straight into emails themselves.

Forget opening the attachment. All you have to do is view the email to potentially
get a virus, Kuo added. For instance, have you ever opened or viewed an email that
states its "loading"? Well, once everything is "loaded," a virus in the email might
just load onto your computer.

So if I were you, I'd click on View on the toolbar in your Outlook or Outlook
Express and close the preview pane. (You have to click on View and then Layout in
Outlook Express.)

On a network at work? You could get a virus that way. Worms are viruses that come
into your computer via networks, Kuo said. They travel from machine to machine and,
unlike, the classic viruses; they attack the machine itself rather than individual
files.

Worms sit in your working memory, or RAM, Nachenberg said.

OK, so we've talked about how the viruses get into a computer. How do they cause so
much damage once they're there?

Let's say you've caught a classic virus, one that replicates and attacks various
files on your computer. Let's go back to the example of the virus that initially
infects your Microsoft Word program.

Well, it might eventually cause that program to crash, Nachenberg said. It also
might cause damage to your computer as it looks for new targets to infect.
This process of infecting targets and looking for new ones could eventually use up
your computer's ability to function, he said.

Often the destruction a virus causes is pegged to a certain event or date and time,
called a trigger. For instance, a virus could be programmed to lay dormant until
January 28. When that date rolls around, though, it may be programmed to do
something as innocuous but annoying as splash popup on your screen, or something as
severe as reformat your computer's hard drive, Nachenberg said.

There are other potential reasons, though, for a virus to cause your computer to be
acting slow or in weird ways. And that leads us to a new segment - the reason virus
writers would want to waste their time creating viruses in the first place.

The majority of viruses are still written by teenagers looking for some notoriety,
Nachenberg said. But a growing segment of the virus-writing population has other
intentions in mind.

For these other intentions, we first need to explain the "backdoor" concept.

The sole purpose of some viruses is to create vulnerability in your computer. Once
it creates this hole of sorts, or backdoor, it signals home to mama or dada virus
writer (kind of like in E.T.). Once the virus writer receives the signal, they can
use and abuse your computer to their own likings.

Trojans are sometimes used to open backdoors. In fact that is usually their sole
purpose, Kuo said.

Trojans are pieces of code you might download onto your computer, say, from a
newsgroup. As in the Trojan War they are named after, they are usually disguised as
innocuous pieces of code. But Trojans aren't considered viruses because they don't
replicate.

Now back to the real viruses. Let's say we have Joe Shoo virus writer. He sends out
a virus that ends up infecting a thousand machines. But he doesn't want the feds on
his case. So he instructs the viruses on the various machines to send their signals,
not of course to his computer, but to a place that can't be traced. Hotmail email
happens to be an example of one such place, Kuo said.

OK, so the virus writers now control these computers. What will they use them for?
One use is to send spam. Once that backdoor is open, they bounce spam off of those
computers and send it to other machines, Nachenberg said.

That's right. Some spam you have in your email right now may have been originally
sent to other innocent computers before it came to yours so that it could remain in
disguise. If the authorities could track down the original senders of spam, they
could crack down on spam itself. Spam senders don't want that.

Ever heard of phishing emails? Those are the ones that purport to be from your
internet service provider or bank. They typically request some information from you,
like your credit card number. The problem is, they're NOT from your internet service
provider or your bank. They're from evil people after your credit card number! Well,
these emails are often sent the same way spam is sent, by sending them via innocent
computers.

Of course makers of anti-virus software use a variety of methods to combat the
onslaught of viruses. Norton, for instance, uses signature scanning, Nachenberg
said.

Signature scanning is similar to the process of looking for DNA fingerprints, he
said. Norton examines programming code to find what viruses are made of. It adds
those bad instructions it finds to its large database of other bad code. Then it
uses this vast database to seek out and match the code in it with similar code in
your computer. When it finds such virus code, it lets you know!


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