All about Virus Attacks and How to Deal with Them

The perpetrator of the Melissa virus, David L. Smith, posted the contaminated file to an alt.sex Usenet group via an AOL account he had stolen. He was sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in prison, but pleaded guilty, and received a much-reduced sentence.

Then, along came Love Bug, faster than Melissa, and more damaging than any virus computer users had ever encountered. A Reuters report claimed that the virus cost the world $15 billion in lost business.

Because love is a many-splendoured thing, people wanted to read emails about how much they were loved, which caused the Love Bug to spread incredibly fast.

The 23-year-old Filipino computer science student who created the virus, plagiarized almost all the code he used. But he got away because of lack of computer crime laws in his country.

The fact is that 7% of data loss is caused by virus attacks. The well-known security expert, Eugene Kaspersky, predicts that there will be a dramatic rise in virus attacks on the Mac this year.

What are Computer Viruses?

A computer virus is a programme that can replicate itself, and is mostly designed with malicious intent. It travels from one PC to another by attaching itself to other programmes.

Because new computer viruses are being created every day, anti-virus programmes come with updates that destroy the latest forms. While some viruses are not dangerous, and only serve to annoy, others can corrupt data or wipe out an entire hard drive.

How the Computer Virus Spreads

When a virus enters a computer through the internet (broadband makes your computer more vulnerable to virus attacks) or contaminated media, it attempts to gain control of the operating system. It looks for a host programme, attaches itself to it, and every time the programme runs, the virus seeks out more hosts. In this way, the virus spreads to many computers and makes copies of itself.

Writers of Malicious Programmes

Some time ago, most malware was created by kids who simply wanted to test their skills. Therefore, these viruses were not really harmful. But the development of the internet gave birth to cyber-vandals and hooligans who decided to specialize in virus writing because of the income it generated.

Soon chat rooms and sites sprang up where these virus writers could hone their skills, and seriously damaging malware was the result.

Today’s professional cyber-hooligans can write code that penetrates computers and networks; they study the weaknesses of software and hardware to ensure the survival of their malicious creations.

How to Protect Your PC from Virus Attacks

An absolute must is anti-virus protection for your PC. You can find several good software programmes like Norton Antivirus. But because new viruses turn up every other day, it is important to update the definition files at least once a week. There is usually a feature that allows you to make these updates automatic, so take advantage of it.

Research says that anti-virus software often fails because most computer users fail to keep these updated.

Also, install a firewall and make sure you keep it on.

Recovering Your Data after a Virus Attack

• ect your computer from the Internet or from the Local Area Network.



• If there’s an error at start-up, try to start your computer in Safe Mode. You could also try starting it from the Windows boot disk.



• Back up your critical data immediately to external media.



• Install anti-virus software if you don’t already have it. But do not download it from the internet – remember, you’ve disconnected it.



• Perform a full system scan. If you don’t find any viruses, your computer is probably safe.



• Uninstall any unlicensed software you have on your machine, and remove junk files from your hard drive.



• If anti-virus software cannot clean your computer, it’s better to reinstall the operating system, and not use it till this has been carried out.



• Provided the virus has not disabled system restore and other critical tools such as Task Manager and Command Prompt, you can try recovering your files through Windows XP’s System Restore.

Article Source: http://www.goldenpalacedownload.com/articles/

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics see www.fieldsassociates.co.uk

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