:: The Word is the Virus - Part I::

A gradual hand-over - or violent occupation, depending on the speaker - of computer technology from a small bunch of techies to the general public has unarguably occurred over the last few years. Some would use phrases as "information revolution", "e-mail age", and so forth, but that's just used-up cliche. It is interesting to see how this transformation has also drastically changed the nature of computer viruses.

When we were younger, and hacking around MS-DOS batch files on IBM-AT machines, virus-authors had a fierce technological challenge to meet. Viruses were delicately hidden in miniature machine-code patches attached to files and secretly passed on over floppy disks. The real challenge was to make the virus invisible to the (usually technically skilled) observer and make it hide out long enough until it was manually distributed among the users. In other words: Back in the good old days, you really had to know your way around assemblers to write those ingenious viruses.

Then came e-mail and mass-use of the Net. Computers are no longer technology as much as a social tool, with everyone and my mother on ICQ. Nobody cares about what's on his computer anymore, MS hides file extensions from us, and documents are opened automatically by MS e-mail programs.

So the virus adopts.

These days viruses are merely social, not technological, beings. They are very easy to program and even simpler to detect. They do not have to hide, since the are executed out of free will by the victims. The only challenge is how to get the victim to commit digital suicide (these viruses were appropriately named "Social Engineering" on Slashdot).

Social engineering. First the new-age viruses came as seemingly interesting e-mail attachments ("Make money fast"), then the authorities posted an "antivirus" in the form of a warning: "Don't open e-mail from unknown sources". "Melissa" was smarter, even ingenious (socially, not technologically). It sent out e-mail from friends and family. Gotcha! Next-generation viruses came even smarter: They made your e-mail program seem to crash, and offered help in the form of a "fix". The fix was the virus, of course.

In other words: Instead of the virus getting smarter, the average user just gets dumber. No offense, mom.

To be continued...

Wadi Writer #2 (Blue)

WadiList@mail.com

Links:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/28/email.virus/index.html

http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=108176

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/05/04/iloveyou.01/index.html

Why "viruses" is the plural of "virus"

http://language.perl.com/misc/virus.html