Keep that hard drive virus free

By Brian Bethel / Abilene Reporter-News

The recent Yahoo! search engine scare has prompted me to give a little advice on keeping your machine virus-free.

I'm not going to go too much into the exploits of the Pants/Hagis Alliance, the clever hacker group who compromised Yahoo!'s security, all in the name of freeing "super hacker" Kevin Mitnick.

I will assure you that there is no Yahoo! logic virus that is going to give us all a headache on Christmas Day.

But I will also not deny that viruses exist. I know they do.

VIRUSES: A PRIMER

What the recent Yahoo! hack did was simply underscore the relatively insecure world of the Internet.

Essentially, PANTS/HAGIS got in and re-wrote some HTML. Breaking the page's security to do so was quite a feat, but what they created amounts to digital graffiti.

Implanting a virus in every machine accessing Yahoo! is feat that few -- if any -- would be capable of. And even then, it wouldn't affect everyone.

First, for any virus to get into your machine, it would have to be downloaded or deliberately placed there.

Web browsers instantly kick in with a warning or request to save a file before downloading anything. All of them, as far as I know, produce a status bar to show the progress of a program being downloaded.

I have been on Yahoo! in the time span Pants/Hagis claim to have had the virus active. Not once did I start receiving a mysterious file.

Next, for the virus to become "active," the downloaded program has to be run. That's the way viruses work. The infected program has to be run a first time before it can infect other programs.

Think of it this way: We're surrounded by real viruses all the time. But for one to get us down it has to actually get in past our defenses and then affect that first, all-important cell.

If it doesn't, it can't replicate. We don't get sick.

Even if you have virus-infected program on your machine, it can't do anything to you until the first time you run it.

BUILDING A WALL

Having said that, it is important to remember viruses are out there.

Real viruses are incredibly colorful, although potentially devastating pieces of code. They can do everything from trash your hard drive to create havoc with your screen.

But a good virus scanner (and there are many out there) can help protect your valuable data. I speak from experience. In 1992, the computer I was using at college was afflicted by a virus.

I downloaded a scanner and managed to clean things up, but had the particular bug my PC caught been a bit more vicious, I might have had to reinstall everything.

Since that time, a virus scanner runs on my computer constantly.

There are freeware virus scanners, but you are better off picking up -- and paying for -- a scanner that provides access to regular updates. That way, as quickly as hackers make 'em, you can zap their viruses.

I generally scan for viruses at least every two weeks. The process is relatively painless and fairly speedy. Some smart programs do virus scans in the background while you work.

If a scanner detects a virus, cleaning your drive is usually as easy as clicking on an icon.

Note that sometimes if you update a program to a newer version or change a common file in some way yourself, some of the less-intelligent scanners might see the alterations as evidence of a virus.

In those cases, you can usually tell the scan program that the new data is fine and get on with your business, or tell it to skip doing anything to the the new file altogether.

A place on the web that has all of the latest anti-virus software is Tucows, http://www.tucows.com. A great site, it is also a good source for pretty much any of your Internet-related needs.

HOAXES TO REMEMBER

There are many popular Internet virus hoaxes going around in addition to the recent Yahoo! stunt. Most of these claim to be e-mail based. But again, if you go back and review our rules of viruses, you will see that is impossible.

E-mail is text. Not a program. You can send programs via e-mail, but once again they have to be downloaded and run.

If someone you don't know sends you a program through e-mail, don't run it. Delete the mail. Problem solved.

If the program is from someone you trust, scan it for viruses and take it from there.

Remember: Mail programs clearly label file attachments. Regular e-mail, which most of us get all the time, is always virus-free.

CATCH THAT VIRUS!

One final tip: If you download programs from the Internet (and who doesn't?), stick to sites like www.download.com or the actual manufacturer's web site.

Doing so will reduce your chances of getting infected immensely.

Yes, evil viruses do lurk in forgotten corners of the Internet, but remember that you have to invite them in before they can do their dirty work. Only an infected program -- not a text file or a web page -- can spread a virus.

And if you keep your virus scanning software handy, you can squash any bugs you might acquire before they do any serious damage.