I know what Mr. Sasabe's feelings about these viruses. He was creating a web page for his class and after he was done he found out that their was a virus in his program. Because of the virus he was forced to trash it and do it all over. Unfortunately I had the same problem while doing my report for the same class. Fortunately I found out early and started it over again with time to spare. This experience has made me more aware of viruses out their. I realized the importance of having a virus checker on your computer. I am taking another version of this class again and because of my past experience I only use my computer at home. How he and I got the virus was not clear. We were both using the computers in two different labs and something happened when you load your program up in the different labs. Once it happened you could not reverse it. I totally changes your page and you have to do it over. While talking to some other friends in the class many of them had a similar problem. I think their was about 4 of us in a class of 20 who had this problem. It is unfortunate and like Mr. Sasabe I hope no one has to deal with it.
It is a shame that we have to beware of people like this. The harder part is that they are normal people like you and me. They are not in poverty but probably are well off and do it for fun. I know that it is hard to find these people and as of right now we do not have the capabilities to find out who they are. I find it sad that they do this and cause so much problems for many people. Many of them probably think that this is a game and don't realize how much they could hurt someone. If they do they don't care. This is a serious problem that we do have to address and find a solution for.
In a way this is the perfect setting for these people to commit these crimes, and they are crimes! It is like breaking and entering someone's house. They steal information like stealing jewelry. The only problem is they are able to leave no trace. They leave no leads to who they are or where they come from. They could be anyone. They could live in a different country for all we know. We need to realign our system so that people are not so anonymous. That is one of the problems about the internet. Everyone is like a phantom. You don't have to let anyone know who you are. Sooner or later we will have an internet police that can track these people.
Who?
To better understand what they do you must know why they are made
and who makes them. The answer is: computer programers. They
make these viruses to find out flaws in the programs that we buy.
When these programs are created they have what computer programers call
"bugs" in the program. They find out what is causing the program
to falter and it is usually a mistake in the lines of programing.
They take these flawed lines of programing out and these are some viruses
that we deal with. The problem is that when they extract these viruses
they have a hugh log of them in their data bases. Once in a while
someone in the organization or someone who hacks into their data base gets
hold of one and starts spreading them out. Also their are people
out there who creat these viruses in their own homes. They just need
to find the right line or lines of information to insert into a program
to make it just eat away at your hard drive.
Why?
Now a big question is why do these people do this. Have you
ever seen the movie "The Net"? If you have then you have seen how
many corperations can be out there to make a profit. I have heard
that some of these viruses have been made so that you buy more software
to combat these problems. Another reason is that there are people
out there who are just angree at the world or angree at former empoyments
and want to get back at them. Their are also those people who are
against technology and are afraid of what might happen if we advance to
much so they are trying to slow down the process. In any case their
are hundreds of reasons people make and release these viruses. Reasons
that you and I could not even phathom.
What?
What are computer viruses? Computer viruses are lines of code
that is inserted to certain programs. Their job is to infect your
computer and cause havoc. Their are two types of viruses: benign
and malignant. Benign viruses do not cause any damage but they just
leave anoying messages that appear on your screen. Malignant viruses
do cause damage to programs and to your computer. These are the ones
that you have to watch out for. Both of these viruses jobs are to
spread through systems and infect as many systems as possible. Then
they are to cause your computer and programs to break down. It spreads
through programs. If a disk is infected then you go to use your computer
with that disk then it is probable that your computer is infected and when
you use another program on your computer, that program probably got infected.
It goes on and on.
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The Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse is a virus that disguised itself as a program. When you would try to run the program it opened up the gates for the virus to infect your computer. When you opened this program it would damage your computer without the user even knowing it. Unlike other viruses the Trojan Horses does not replicate itself, but it is distributed through online services or public domain bulletin boards. In other words, it can disguise itself as anything it wants. It can get to anyone it wants. The person thinks he gets something that he wants but really he got a big headache.
The biggest virus myth that I find astonishing is people beleive that their are computer viruses that can make your computer blow up. It is amazing how many people think that this is possible. They feel that the virus will trip a circut and cause a intense power build up that makes your computer explode or melt right infront of you as you watch helplesly. All your programs and hardware gone!! I have to admit that a long while ago I thought that way. This is before I learned more about the viruses and what they were. I think many people get this idea because of how movies or TV programs portray these viruses working. Just to let everyone know that their is not a virus that can blow up your computer, at least not yet!
Are computer viruses like Biological Viruses? They are similar in a way. They are spread in the same way. Biological viruses are spread from one person to another by contact. A person who has the virus talks or touches another person and that person gets the virus. The computer virus works in the same way. An infected computer gives it to a disk that it uses and the disk travels to a different computer and gives it to that computer. It is also alike because it replicates inside of the computer. When it enters your body it starts small, but as it replicates or reproduces itself, it causes many problems and starts to destroy the computer or body. A biological virus spreads through your body undetected just like the computer viruses spreads through your programs undetected.
One difference in these two viruses is that the biological virus can adapt itself and evolve when the body builds up an immunity for it. I feel the computer viruses are incapable of adapting and changing itself to cause different damages. The computer virus is not an inteligent or evolving type of organism. It needs to be told what to do and how to do it. Just like a computer is not able to make decisions for itself the virus cannot. The only way it may adapt is if the programer prepares it for a certain type of immune system. But still it is programmed.
Their is news about a new intelligent agents software that seeks out and attacks computer viruses wherever they can hide on the Internet or on your hard drive. They say it is like an immune system with T-cells. I don't see it that way. I feel that it is a software that can find the viruses that it has been programed to find and kill but it is not able to adapt to new viruses anymore than the comuter virus is able to adapt to the new program. They are tying to make it seem that it can do more than it really can. Later they will come up with new brograms that are just updated with more viruses to detect and kill.
I have looked at some other 409b students reports on this same subject. I saw alot of the same things that I found. Many people have the same views on computer viruses and we found a lot of the same links and stories. I guess these are the more famouse links and more informative. I did however find some new things that I have not read before. I am not sure many people would understand much of this language but as we go along we will learn more about it and use it more frequently. I think they have done a good job on presenting their opinions and information.
Hello future generations. I hope that you will find my page useful in your search for solutions to computer viruses. Her is a link that I think will help you understand more about viruses. It is called Symantec . I feel that their will never be an end to computer viruses like their will never be an end to biological viruses. We find cures for the one out their now but their are always new viruses being introduced to us. I hope that in the future these computer viruses don't get the capability of adapting and evolving. If they do, watch out! Well I am sure that many of you will look back at this paper and things will be different in the future. I hope that this paper will give you an idea of what it was like back in 1998. Good luck in the future!!
I have learned a lot about what computer viruses are, where they come from, what they do, and how you get them. I now know the importance of having a virus checker and keeping it updated. I feel that the more of us that use these virus checkers, the less chance of us spreading these viruses. I don't think that we will ever be able to stop the introduction of new viruses but we can keep them limited. We all need to be aware of these viruses and the more aware we are the less headache we will get.
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