Monday, March 11, 2002		Article

TERROR is the new order of the day both in the real world and the virtual world. The real world terror may cause the loss of life and property but the threat perception in the virtual world is also equally big though it is limited to property in terms of your computer and precious data. The virtual world terrorists or the cyber criminals create worms and viruses to destroy the data and also in some cases other hardware of the computer like hard disk to spread terror. The losses caused by cyber criminals run into billions of dollars across the world and the worst part is that anybody and everybody, who uses a computer, is a potential target of virus attack on his computer. So, the big question is that what is the way out and how to survive the threat perception.

The simple answers to this question are prevention and precaution. It is an old saying that prevention is better than cure and this is the perfect solution of avoiding the virus threat. So, what are the precautions, which can be taken to combat the virus threat? Well! There are many precautions, which would be required at various stages of operation to check the entry of virus on your system. First of all, the threat perception could be at the booting stage.

In terms of overall virus onslaught, the chances of attack on the boot sector is rather less. Since the virus attack on boot sector is deadly, which can even bring down your whole system, thus one should always be careful about this threat perception and should take adequate measures to stop the virus entering your system. However, there is no universal formula, which could be called the ultimate measure for checking the entry of boot sector virus, because it would depend on the type of environment where the computer is being used.

For example, if one is doing an outside job like DTP work or other data entry job, then a lot of outside data sources like Floppies, CDs would be used. This could increase the risk of boot sector virus. However, in case, where no outside media is being used and the system is working in a protected environment, chances of boot sector virus are less. Therefore, in all cases of unprotected environment using the outside media, one should take extra precaution. First of all disable "boot up Floppy seek" in BIOS feature set up. Also, choose the bootable sequence to C: only (if there is an option) and try avoiding booting from the floppy drive. Disabling these settings would not cause any problem and these can be enabled as and when required. However, disabling the outside media for booting process sufficiently protects from the virus. In case the threat perception is high for example, multiple users on single system or system working in unprotected environment, even then the virus scanner could be configured to check the virus at the boot up. This will completely protect your system from the virus attack and especially from the boot sector virus.

Since the use of outside media cannot be prohibited in majority of the cases, thus it is in the interest of the user to scan the media i.e. the floppy or the CD ROM carefully with the updated version of the virus scanner. This will eliminate the chances of entry of virus in the system. It is worth mentioning here that it is not necessary that only the virus from the outside media can cause damage to your system.

There are some worms, which are also called as sleeping worms and they get alive only on a particular date and thus cause extensive damage to the system. The regular use of virus scanner on the fixed media i.e. the various partitions of the hard disk also protects your computer from the virus onslaught. Thus most ideally in an unprotected environment, one should scan the system for virus at a regular interval of time, besides scanning any outside media as and when required.

The next stage of virus intrusion is through e-mail and visiting some Websites. It is the most common entry point for the entry of virus in the system and is also most vulnerable to security threat. Today majority of virus are spread through e-mail. It is worth mentioning here that all recent deadly viruses like Sircam, Nimda etc. are delivered through email as they carry their payload as attachment to the infected mail. In this case also, the best cure against these nasty viruses is to take precautions. The necessary precaution in this case is not to open any unknown mail with striking messages.

Also be careful in opening any unsolicited and unknown mails, and as far as possible do not open or delete these mails without opening the mails that contain the attachment. Even the common file extensions like .doc, .xls, .exe, etc. could be the carrier of virus. Some of the common file extensions, which could contain the viruses are the filenames with extension .com, bat, mdb, xls, doc, lnk, ppt, jpg, mpeg, ini, dat, zip, txt, scr, exe etc. This list of these extensions represents only a small resource of virus, while there are many more file extensions, which are prone to virus threat. Even if you are getting a mail from a known source, you must check it with the virus scanner, before opening it or saving it on your hard disk. Remember not to download anything from the Internet, without getting it scanned by the virus scanner. In this direction, one good option is to use the Yahoo! E-mail. As this e-mail account is protected by the Norton Antivirus, the chances of virus intrusion in your system are reduced to a large extent as Yahoo! will give you an option to scan the attachment with the Norton Antivirus, before downloading it to your system.

However, this does not cover the virus threat fully as there are some sites, which can put some virus codes on your system causing extensive damage to your system. In some cases, this threat cannot be protected by anti-virus. Thus if you spend a lot of time on the Internet, then it is advisable to have a firewall installed on your system. The firewalls not only protects your system from the virus threat, they also keep a check on your system from any unwanted activity. Since the Firewall and the virus can co-exist together, a combination of the two can a be good solution to the threat of virus. There are many firewalls available, which are designed for standalone machines and for home users. Given the threat perception of the virus, the use of these viruses is a must today.

Lastly, to avert the virus attack, always keep your anti virus software updated.