Trojan horses.

Disinfectant does not attempt to address the problems of worms and



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

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

additionally does something destructive behind your back. An example is

A “Trojan horse” is a program that appears to do something useful, yet



UNIX computers in a single day.

which infected and disabled several thousand government and university

programs. The most well-known example is the Fall 1988 Internet worm,

over a network of computers. They are not spread through the sharing of

survive and replicate. Worms usually spread within a single computer or

itself to other programs. Unlike a virus, it does not require a host to

A “worm” is a program that replicates and spreads, but does not attach



destructive software.

incorrectly appropriated the term “virus” to describe all types of

such as “worms” and “Trojan horses.” The media seem to have

Viruses should not be confused with other types of destructive software



have to get a new copy of the program.

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

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

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



the viruses and repair files that have been infected by the viruses.

AIDS, MEV#, nFLU, INIT 29, ANTI and MacMag viruses. It will both detect

Disinfectant version 1.2 recognizes the Scores, nVIR A, nVIR B, Hpat,



cause unexplained crashes and strange behavior.

of the system. We have also discovered bugs in most viruses that can

operating system and can interfere in unexpected ways with other parts

frequently interfere with printing. They also live at very low levels in the

this is enough to cause problems all by itself. In particular, viruses

operation of their Macintosh. Viruses occupy memory and disk space, and

have experienced infections have reported problems with the normal

are almost always damaging, even if it is unintentional. Many people who

benign. It is very important to realize, however, that even benign viruses

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



day.

programmed to wake up and erase hard drives on Israel’s Independence

something. For example, in the IBM PC world, the “Israeli” virus was

malignant viruses, in addition to replicating, do attempt to damage

they do not intentionally try to do any damage. On the other hand,

beep, display messages on the screen, or do something else innocuous, but

they do not attempt to do anything malicious. For example, they may

Viruses may be “benign” or “malignant.” Benign viruses replicate, but



the sharing and distribution of infected software.

and to other software. Viruses spread from one Macintosh to another via

run an infected program, the virus quickly spreads to your system files

A virus is a piece of code that attaches itself to other programs. Once you



cause problems for some time.

seems to be especially acute at universities. Viruses will continue to

community, viruses continue to spread rapidly and widely. The problem

increasingly serious problem in the computing world. In the Macintosh

Viruses and other kinds of destructive computer software have become an



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Introduction