Viruses
Types of Viruses
Viruses are programs written to do harm to your computer. Some will reformat your hard drive, some will attach themselves to other programs making these programs unusable, and some will attack the computer's memory. Most viruses are acquired from the Internet. You can get a virus by downloading files from your UNIX account, the Internet, or from other people's computers. Here are the most common:
- Viruses
- A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.
- Email viruses
- An email virus moves around in email messages and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's email address book.
- Worms
- A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there as well.
- Trojan horses
- A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game), but instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically.
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Updated 11/12/03
Blaster and Welchia
There is a security problem in Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000, which can cause you problems when you are connected to the Internet. Currently there are two different viruses taking advantage of this security hole. You may see an error similar to the following: "Generic host process for win32 services has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Windows must now restart because the remote procedure call terminated unexpectedly. This shutdown was initiated by NT authority system." Or you may see some type of RPC error.
If your computer gave you the error above, you will want to follow the instructions provided at Symantec to download and run the W32.Blaster.Worm Removal Tool. If your computer's internet connection is extremely slow you should download and run the Welchia removal tool. To be sure you don't have either virus you can run both of these tools.
All Windows XP and Windows 2000 users should run Windows Update as soon as possible. To run Windows Updates, click the following link: Windows Update - let it scan your computer and run all the critical updates. This website is experiencing a lot of traffic, so please be patient with it.
If you are getting disconnected or rebooting so often that you can not download the patch, try turning on Internet Connection Firewall if you are running Windows XP by going to your Start Button -> Network and Dial up Connections -> Right click and choose properties on your Athena Group dial-up connection and click on the Advanced tab on top. Turn on the Internet connection firewall and Click OK. This problem may also cause problems for users of Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
For more information on the worm please check out the Microsoft Security Bulletin.