THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701260066
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: 60 lines
Sure enough, along with a few happy crocuses that can't tell the bloomin' time, now comes the annual crop of computer viruses to bust out all over in one of the nastier rites of approaching spring.
``We start picking them up after the Christmas holidays when our school computers are tempting targets,'' said Charles D. Twiddy, owner of Commtech Computers in Elizabeth City.
``This year, we had to create a designated computer loaded with virus-detecting and purging programs, and we check out everything that comes in, disks as well as computers,'' Twiddy said last week.
At Tidewater Computers, John Sherwin, the resident tech, also has been busy installing anti-virus programs that catch and sidetrack viruses when a computer is turned on.
Without anti-virus protection, any loaned or borrowed program disk can infect another computer. As a lot of the more malevolent hackers who write and spread virus programs have discovered, one of the sneakiest ways to infect a computer is to download a virus through a telephone modem.
``Some of the more complex viruses are becoming increasingly difficult to erase from computer hard drives,'' said Twiddy.
``It takes a smart computer user to write a virus program,'' Twiddy said. ``You're writing code at the assembly language level - and below - and some of the more sophisticated virus programs are booby-trapped so when you try to clean out the virus it shows up in a new disguise and with new symptoms,'' said Twiddy.
Like Sherwin at Tidewater Computer, Twiddy's techs and engineers scan every computer that comes in, along with hundreds of disks that have to be checked every week.
``We have anti-virus programs now that can find just about any virus and identify it by name,'' Twiddy said. ``Nobody knows for sure how many nerds, geeks and sickos have written and distributed viruses as a crutch for their dysfunctional egos.
``Viruses are relatively easy to detect and remove from a computer hard drive, but they're also easy to ignore until they've done damage that takes hours to correct.''
Most viruses attack the ``execute'' and ``command'' areas of a computer operating system, the vital brain that tells the computer what to run and how to run it.
Two of the most prevalent viruses infecting area computers this year are called ``ANTI-EXE'' and ``MONKEY-B,'' technicians said.
Some high-tech viruses can command a computer to move files to unmarked storage areas on a hard disk or call the user dirty names on the screen. A really bad virus can destroy program disks or jumble an operating system so thoroughly that a hard disk must be totally erased and reloaded with a new system.
``The anti-virus programs work pretty well; an inexpensive anti-viral system gives you a degree of protection and a good system gives you what you pay for,'' said Sherwin.
Both Twiddy and Sherwin get from five to seven infected systems each week, a lot of them from schools where the temptation to slip in a poisoned disk intrigues show-off students.
Elizabeth City is not the only infected territory. About the same number of the same kinds of viruses have shown up in Outer Banks businesses.