Viruses can wreak havok on computer systems and do serious damage to your files. Most often they operate in the background where they are never even noticed. Find out what happens when viruses attack and learn what you must do to protect yourself.
Guests
Phil Kachelmyer
Phil Kachelmyer
Phil Kachelmyer is the director of University Computer Services at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has been working with computers since 1969 and has been at the University since 1978.
Brian Eckman
Brian Eckman
Brian Eckman has worked in technology-related jobs at the University of Minnesota for over six years and currently is a security analyst for the University's Office of Information Technology Security and Assurance unit. He submitted more than 60 virus files to Symantec between October 2003 and February 2004 that Symantec AntiVirus products had not detected and has supplied evidence to the FBI and the Secret Service to assist them in computer crime investigations.
For Your Files
Phil Kachelmyer, the University's director of Computer Services, defined a virus:
"In general a computer virus is a small program that runs on a computer, unbeknownst in many cases to the owner, and which may have some nasty side effects. It might slow the computer down, it might delete files, it might change the contents of files."
Then Phil explained a worm is a particular kind of virus.
"While it's on your computer it's doing certain things, whatever the programmer has assigned for it to do. But then as you move about the Internet, it finds ways of attaching to what you are doing and passing itself onto another computer to do the same thing."
Phil also defined a new term, robot:
"Robots are things out on the net that watch what you're doing. They identify what your machine is and they watch the Web sites you go to, they watch the kinds of e-mails you send, who you send them to, what it is that you're doing, and they capture information about you. And that can include capturing passwords if you're not careful about how you use a password."
University Security Analyst Brian Eckman warned:
"Almost any software that you run on your computer could potentially be vulnerable to attack. In the last year there's been widely publicized holes in the Real player. It's an audio player. Downloading a [malicious] music file could [enable a virus to] take over your computer. Abode Acrobat Reader had [a hole] that was kind of quietly patched recently [that made] viewing a malicious PDF file [dangerous because a virus] could take over your computer."
And Phil Kachelmyer said the most important thing to thwart virus, worm, and robot attacks is:
"Keeping the software updated. You need to make sure that you've got anti-virus software. You need to make sure that it is updated. In the past the advice was to make sure that you check for virus updates ... once a week, maybe once a month. That has changed. It really is the kind of thing that you have to be much more vigilant [about]. Look for updates on a more regular basis (daily probably)."
Robots
Computer programs designed to roam the Internet to gather information and index sites.
Worms
Worms are simlar to viruses in that they try to copy (replicate) themselves over a network
and onto another computer through an unprotected shared folder or directory.
Patches
Small programs that are downloaded to fix security bugs in your
computer's operating system.
Firewall
Software that turns off ports on a computer and filters the information
going to and coming from the Internet.