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This article first appeared in the March 1998 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
Several days ago, a well-meaning friend sent me the following familiar e-mail message.
Subject: Good Times To: lee.larson@gmail.com From: chicken-little@aol.com Date: Wed, 11 Feb 98 23:52:53 -0500 There is a virus on the Internet being sent by e-mail. If you get some mail with the subject "Good Times," DON'T read it or download it. It is a virus that will erase your hard drive. Forward this to all your friends. It may help them a lot.
Of course, there is no Good Times virus. I've gotten this warning, or one very similar to it, every few months for the last couple of years. I put it into the urban legends category, along with alligators in the sewer and Elvis sightings. The fact that it keeps circulating says a lot about how scared people are of viruses and how little they really know about them.
The press and the media in general don't help much.
Last year the big virus scare was the AOL4FREE virus, which was a recycled form of the Good Times hoax. This was made more complicated by the fact that there actually was a program--not a virus--called AOL4FREE, which was written to steal free accounts from America Online. A college student was convicted of writing and distributing the program. At least one major wire service confused the virus hoax with the thievery.
And let's not forget that a tiny PowerBook carried the virus which destroyed the alien invaders and saved the human race in Independence Day.
So, what's the real story? Are viruses a big problem, or just a nuisance? As a Macintosh user, it's hard to sift the truth out of the general press hysteria.
First, let's see what a virus really is and how you can get infected.
A virus is nothing more than a small program that attaches itself to other programs. When you run an infected program, the virus wakes up and looks for other programs it can infect. The virus spreads by infecting a program which is taken to another computer. The new computer then becomes infected.
Notice the word "run" in the previous paragraph. The only way a virus can do its magic is if its program is run. Data files such as e-mail messages and text files are read by programs--they are not programs. You can't get a virus by reading your e-mail or looking at a web page.
Where it starts getting more complicated is when this distinction between programs and data begins to blur. Such fuzziness is nowhere more apparent than with some of the programs from Microsoft Office. Starting with Word 6, Microsoft began including a powerful programming language for writing macros. It wasn't long before malicious people figured out how to write macro viruses for Word documents. These viruses can only attack when you're running Word or Excel, and some of them can attack both Macs and Windows machines. In this case, the program is still being run, but it is being run within the Word or Excel environment. If you don't use Word or Excel, it can't harm you. The viruses which run within Word and Excel are called macro viruses.
The usual type of virus, which runs outside of a supporting program, is called a system virus.
A Windows system virus cannot become a Macintosh system virus.
When the media deal with viruses, they are generally talking about Windows system viruses. It is estimated there are somewhere between 2,000 and 12,000 Windows system viruses. (The huge spread in the estimate depends upon how finely sifted different strains of the same virus are counted.) When reporters see numbers like this, they see a big problem. Big problems lead to flashy headlines.
On the other hand, the estimates for the number of viable Macintosh viruses range from 20 to 50, and many of those won't work under Mac OS 8. So, by this simple estimate, the problem appears a hundred times worse under Windows.
Of course, this feeling of superiority you get by knowing your Mac has far less chance of being trashed by a virus would fade quickly, if it did get trashed. The truth is that most viruses are fairly benign and won't trash your system. Problems generally appear because of unintended side-effects. Truly malicious viruses are rare because, if they trash the system they infect, it's harder for them to spread.
There are easy and effective measures to avoid both benign and malicious viruses. A number of programs are available to prevent virus attacks. For years, I've been relying on a free program called Disinfectant. I like Disinfectant because it's simple, fast and completely unobtrusive. It just sits in the background and waits for telltale signs of virus activity. When a virus tries to do its thing, Disinfectant jumps in, stops it, and warns the user. The latest version, Disinfectant 3.7.1, recognizes all known Macintosh system viruses. Disinfectant is available from all the online services and from its home site at Northwestern University (ftp://ftp.acns.nwu.edu/pub/disinfectant/).
There are several commercial virus programs for the Mac which do have a few advantages over Disinfectant for some people. These include SAM (Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh), Virex for Macintosh, McAfee (Network Associates) VirusScan and Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus ToolKit for Macintosh. There are basically two advantages the commercial programs have over Disinfectant. The most important advantage is that they all handle macro viruses to some degree. Disinfectant only works with system viruses. All the commercial programs have a notification systems through which they notify their customers when a new virus comes out. To learn of an upgrade to Disinfectant, you have to keep an eye on the Internet.
No matter which type of virus software you choose, keeping it up to date is very important. The virus writers know about all the antivirus software, and they write their viruses to slip by unnoticed. Old virus software cannot detect new viruses.
Upgrades
Of course, the most important software upgrade to come out in recently is Mac OS 8.1. But Apple has been busy on other fronts as well. All the following software is available from Apple's update server (http://swupdates.info.apple.com/).
The most significant upgrade is the release of Macintosh Runtime Java 2.0. This new release is much faster than previous releases and has a speedy new runtime compiler for PowerPC machines. If your only use of Java is reading web pages with Netscape Navigator, then this update won't do you any good because Navigator can only its own built-in Java. But, if your browser of choice is Microsoft Internet Explorer, you'll find a very welcome speedup of Java applets, if you tell Explorer to use the new release from Apple. Macintosh Runtime Java 2.0 is available as a free, but hefty, download from Apple (http://www.apple.com/macos/java/).
One of the most useful tools for PowerBooks has finally made it to the desktop in the form of Location Manager 2.0.1. Location Manager allows you to quickly switch between network and printer configurations.
The new Personal Web Sharing 1.5 is a major update from previous versions, featuring alias support; server uploading; the automatic flat compression of files for uploads or downloads; the ability to copy 'my address' from the control panel; and a new Preferences window that includes port number, activity log, CGI, and MIME type options.
QuickTime 3D 1.5.3, contains miscellaneous bug fixes and optimizations for high end graphics card use, will be included with the retail release of Mac OS 8.1, but is not in the online update. The installer can be downloaded and the update can be done separately, if you don't want to buy the update CD.
A bug has surfaced in the Appearance 1.0.1 extension from System 8.1. In a few programs, the cursor position is sometimes out of place while editing text. Some of the programs reportedly affected include Nisus Writer, Fontographer, XPress and Mathematica. Wolfram Research, publishers of Mathematica, worked with Apple to develop a patch. You can find it on their web site (http://www.wolfram.com/support/Systems/Macintosh/FE/CursorProblem.html).
There are a couple of things to watch out for when applying this patch.
First, don't apply it to the Appearance extension in your active System Folder. Doing this may cause your machine to crash and might leave the Appearance extension damaged. The proper method is to apply the patch to a copy of the Appearance extension, and move the patched copy to your System Folder.
Second, some programs, including the newest Eudora Pro, shipped with version 1.0.2 of the Appearance extension. Version 1.0.2 has the bug, but the patcher will not fix it. Your best bet here is to find a copy of Appearance 1.0.1 to patch and then throw away version 1.0.2.
Mac User Group Mailing List
After a hiatus of a month or so, the local email list server devoted to Macintosh topics has reappeared. It has the somewhat redundant name the-macusergroup. The list is open to anyone with an email address. To subscribe, just send any email to the address the-macusergroup-subscribe@aye.net. The list is maintained by the Louisville Computer Society and hosted by Aye.Net. For more information, see the Louisville Computer Society's web page (http://www.aye.net/~lcs/).
Louisville Computer Society
Video Shop IV 3D will be shown at the March 23 meeting of The Louisville Computer Society. The meeting, which is open to all, will be at 7 P.M. in the East Government Center on Juneau Drive in Middletown. More information can be obtained from the Louisville Computer Society's web page (http://www.aye.net/~lcs/).
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