Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!xrtll!silver
From: silver@xrtll.uucp (Hi Ho Silver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Is Virus a Real Threat?
Message-ID: <1990Dec22.200502.6851@xrtll.uucp>
Date: 22 Dec 90 20:05:02 GMT
References: <9012182011.AA18197@f170.n771.z3.fidonet.org>
Reply-To: silver@xrtll.UUCP (Hi Ho Silver)
Organization: Not around here, pal!
Lines: 55

In article <9012182011.AA18197@f170.n771.z3.fidonet.org> Tony_Prisk@f110.n770.z3.fidonet.org (Tony Prisk) writes:
$The infection of Computers by Viruses in this Country is now commonplace
$and I Know of several people who have had their computers infected.  The
$UK Magazine PC Today which is available in this country has had viruses on
$its August and November Disks.

   I've been working with computers since before the IBM PC came along, and
hadn't met a virus until this summer.  But they are becoming more and more
common, and the number of viruses in the world is rising exponentially
(it is expected that the number of new viruses discovered this year will
exceed the total discovered in all years prior to this year - for the PC,
anyway).  I'd never met a virus until late October of this year.  I've
now met two, and I'll be very surprised if I don't meet several more
in 1991.

   Infection is becoming more and more common for several reasons, including:
- widespread use of PCs
- "It'll never happen to me, I don't use BBSs" and similar thinking
- LANs (I've had to disinfect a LAN that was spreading a virus like
  crazy, due to poor security)
- the fact that you can be infected for weeks or months with some viruses
  before you notice; during this time, you may spread the infection to 
  many other people

$The Stoned virus is probably the most common and is the easiest to remove.

   It depends on what tools you have.  McAfee's Clean, though it is an
excellent program, will not always be able to remove Stoned from your
partition table.  If you don't have a program that can rebuild it, and
don't know how yourself (very, very few people do), you may have to
reformat (low-level) your drive to get rid of it.

$The best virus program available is Scan. It is a Shareware program and
$should be available on most BBS. It is updated monthly and currently checks
$for almost 200 known viruses. The firm that has released Scan also has a
$program called Clean which gets rid of the viruses once detected by Scan.

   Version 67, which was the most recent until about a month ago, will
recognize 144 viruses and 223 sub-strains.  Most of these are rare, however;
there are 10 viruses which account for over 95% of all infections.

   You can contact McAfee Associates at (408) 988-3832 to register your
copy of SCAN/CLEAN/etc.  Their BBS numbers are (408) 988-4004 (2400 bps)
and (408) 988-5138 ("HST 9600 baud", they say).  They also have a program
which loads as a TSR (memory-resident) and will actively protect you from
viruses, rather than relying on you to scan your files.  I'm sure they'd
be happy to tell you all about their products.

DISCLAIMER:  I have no connection to McAfee Associates except as a
	satisfied customer.
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