INFORMATION ON COMPUTER VIRUSES

A computer virus is a program that will spread by modifying other programs. Computer viruses are designed to propagate themselves. Some are virulent and can halt or disable the computer system, others make software behave unpredictably or erase data files, others display a message and some produce no visible symptoms at all. Computer viruses are not mysterious. They do, however, put every computer user at risk.

Since 1983, over 40,000 viruses have been created and roughly 200 new viruses are created each month. In addition the threat of computer viruses have spawned many hoax events which appears to be a virus menace – when, in fact, there is none.

The only way to determine if a file or a computer is infected is to run the most current version of anti-virus software, such as the Symantec Antivirus, which is site licensed and available without charge to faculty and staff at Suffolk Law School. This software, bundled with Microsoft Office, is available to students from the law school Bookstore at a minimial cost.

Any computer is susceptible to virus infection. The threat is real. Since infected files can be transmitted via the Internet/World Wide Web, as e-mail attachments, macros in document and spreadsheet files, as hidden or system files on otherwise empty shared disks – we should assume that every computer system is always at risk.

The following presents 5 guidelines to assure yourself that your computer is not infected and that you are not passing infected files to others. The University and each individual user share a responsibility to make our computing environment virus-free through prevention, detection and cleansing and reporting viruses events. Each user must share this responsibility by installing and running the latest version of the Symantec Antivirus software.

Viruses are software programs, and they can do the same things as any other programs running on a computer. The actual effect of any particular virus depends on how it was programmed by the person who wrote the virus.

Some viruses are deliberately designed to damage files or otherwise interfere with your computer's operation, while others don't do anything but try to spread themselves around. But even the ones that just spread themselves are harmful, since they damage files and may cause other problems in the process of spreading.

Note that viruses can't do any damage to hardware: they won't melt down your CPU, burn out your hard drive, cause your monitor to explode, etc. Warnings about viruses that will physically destroy your computer are usually hoaxes, not legitimate virus warnings.

A type of program that is often confused with viruses is a 'Trojan horse' program. This is not a virus, but simply a program (often harmful) that pretends to be something else.

For example, you might download what you think is a new game; but when you run it, it deletes files on your hard drive. Or the third time you start the game, the program E-mails your saved passwords to another person.

Note: simply downloading a file to your computer won't activate a virus or Trojan horse; you have to execute the code in the file to trigger it. This could mean running a program file, or opening a Word/Excel document in a program (such as Word or Excel) that can execute any macros in the document.

You can't get a virus just by reading a plain-text E-mail message. What you have to watch out for are encoded messages containing embedded executable code (i.e., JavaScript in an HTML message) or messages that include an executable file attachment (i.e., an encoded program file or a Word document containing macros), or an attached image file.

In order to activate a virus or Trojan horse program, your computer has to execute some type of code. This could be a program attached to an E-mail, a Word document you downloaded from the Internet, or something received on a floppy disk. There's no special hazard in files attached to Usenet posts or E-mail messages: they're no more dangerous than any other file.

Treat any file attachments that might contain executable code as carefully as you would any other new files: save the attachment to disk and then check it with an up-to-date virus scanner before opening the file.

If your E-mail or news software has the ability to automatically execute JavaScript, Word macros, or other executable code contained in or attached to a message, you should disable this feature.

Any executable file shows up unexpectedly attached to an E-mail, should be deleted it unless you can positively verify what it is, who it came from, and why it was sent to you.