copy of this report.

Arlington, VA 22209, (703)522-5055, for information on how to obtain a

industry association. Contact ADAPSO at 1300 N. 17th Street, Suite 300,

Ferbrache, published by ADAPSO, the computer software and services

Threats,” by Eugene H. Spafford, Kathleen A. Heaphy, and David J.

“Computer Viruses—Dealing with Electronic Vandalism and Programmed

destructive computer software in general, we refer you to the report

For more information on the problems of computer viruses and



to the comparatively meaningless damage caused by computer viruses.

compare the enormous suffering caused by biological viruses such as AIDS

people—they never occur naturally. Most importantly, it is not possible to

never created by people. Computer viruses are always created by

organisms. Biological viruses usually occur naturally and are almost

between biological and computer viruses too far. Computers are not living

As with all analogies, however, it is possible to carry the analogy



inoculate or vaccinate the system to protect it against future infection.

the infection without damaging the system and it is sometimes possible to

damaged. With both kinds of viruses, it is sometimes possible to remove

survive. In both cases, the infected system is sometimes severely

Both of them replicate and they both require the assistance of a host to

The analogy between biological viruses and computer viruses is striking.



freeware and shareware software are remarkably virus-free.

infected commercial software. Most of the major national sources of

from the truth. There have been many reported cases of (inadvertently)

against viruses by avoiding shareware and freeware software. This is far

There is a dangerous misconception that you can protect your Macintosh



simple things we suggest you do to protect your Mac.

viruses. See the section titled “Recommendations” for a short list of the

minutes per week to effectively protect your Macintosh against the known

should take the problem seriously. Using Disinfectant, it only takes a few

There is no need to panic over the current virus situation. However, you



Trojan horses.

Disinfectant does not attempt to address the problems of worms and



while you ogled the cheesecake images. Trojan horses do not replicate.

is the “Sexy Ladies” HyperCard stack, which erased your hard drive

yet additionally does something destructive behind your back. An example

A “Trojan horse” is an application which appears to do something useful,



in a single day.

and disabled several thousand government and university UNIX computers

most well-known example is the Fall 1988 Internet worm, which infected

computers. They are not spread through the sharing of applications. The

host to survive and replicate. Worms usually spread over a network of

attach itself to other applications. Unlike a virus, it does not require a

A “worm” is an application which replicates and spreads, but does not



such as “worms” and “Trojan horses.”

Viruses should not be confused with other types of destructive software



system against infection by any of the known Mac viruses.

When properly installed, the Disinfectant INIT will protect an uninfected

Disinfectant also includes a virus protection startup document (INIT).



propagates between HyperCard stacks and is very rare.

Disinfectant does not recognize the “Dukakis” virus, which only



will have to get a new copy of the application.

appears, we will have to modify the application to recognize it, and you

been configured and programmed to recognize. If a new virus or strain

Disinfectant will not recognize all possible viruses—only the ones it has



viruses.

detect the viruses and repair files which have been infected by the

recognizes many possible unknown variations and clones. It will both

variations and clones of these viruses. Furthermore, Disinfectant also

MacMag, WDEF, ZUC, and MDEF viruses. It also recognizes all the known

Disinfectant version 2.0 recognizes the Scores, nVIR, INIT 29, ANTI,



crashes and strange behavior.

also discovered errors in most viruses which can cause unexplained

interfere in unexpected ways with other parts of the system. We have

They also live at very low levels in the operating system and can

memory and disk space and this is enough to cause problems all by itself.

problems with the normal operation of their Macintosh. Viruses occupy

unintentional. Many people who have experienced infections have reported

non-malicious viruses are almost always damaging, even if it is

non-malicious. It is very important to realize, however, that even

We are very fortunate that to date all known Macintosh viruses are



hard drives.

IBM PC world which intentionally delete files or destroy the contents of

damage something. For example, there have been several viruses in the

other hand, malicious viruses, in addition to replicating, do attempt to

else innocuous, but they do not intentionally try to do any damage. On the

example, they may beep, display messages on the screen, or do something

replicate, but they do not attempt to do anything destructive. For

Viruses may be malicious or non-malicious. Non-malicious viruses



or infected disks.

Macintosh to another via the sharing and distribution of infected software

your system files and to other software. Viruses spread from one

or files. Once you run an infected application, the virus quickly spreads to

A virus is a piece of software which attaches itself to other applications



continue to cause problems for some time.

community, viruses continue to spread rapidly and widely. Viruses will

increasingly serious problem in the computing world. In the Macintosh

Viruses and other kinds of destructive computer software have become an








åIntroduction



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