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Midimusic.org.uk Computer Humour, Emergencies

4.2 Viruses

If computers alone don't throw the average user into fits of paranoia, computer viruses will. But as with other aspects of computing, this deep concern fails to prompt any attempt on the user's part to learn the facts.

About two years ago, I was asked to run a virus scan on one company's network of computers. I did and I found a simple harmless virus on each computer in the network. After I reported that to the company's officials, they gasped (literally), then thanked me, then asked me to leave despite my offers to remove the virus with the anti-virus program. The next day, I found out that they formatted every single hard drive of every computer, backing up only the most important data.

A user called to inform us that his laptop had a virus. When we asked why he though he had a virus, he promptly explained that he must have a virus as his system would no longer fit in the docking station. It was later determined that it had a faulty port on the back of the system.

One day at school, I was lending a friend a couple of my CD games. Then a girl came up and said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You might get it back with a virus on it."

Sometime later I dutifully ran the checker.

A mailing list that dispenses computer-related tips and tricks each day once sent out the following dubious virus prevention tip:

Virus Information of the Day: Lock your floppies

If you're using a diskette only to read information, why not lock it first? Just flip the "switch" up on the top-left corner on the back of the diskette. That way, you can prevent diskette-transferred viruses from being loaded onto your PC. If you need to access a diskette that you'll need to write to, scan it with your antivirus software.

A friend of mine came around in a bit of a panic, saying that his dad's machine looked like it had a virus. He asked if I had any anti-virus software I could lend him. I gave him a self-extracting archive of a virus detection program on a floppy disk. Foolishly, this archive was named antvirus.exe. A week later he came back, saying that his dad had looked at the disk and assumed that this was a virus, so he'd formatted the disk.

Back in the early 90s the programming staff in our office were still using dumb terminals to do mainframe programming. The department installed a dedicated PC to share files over a modem with other departments off site. People in the office began to use the machine for 'unofficial' purposes such as playing games after hours. Management saw this and, afraid of someone introducing a virus, installed password protection software on the machine (which also prevented the machine from being booted from a floppy disk to bypass the security). Shortly afterwards the machine began performing erratically and occasionally lost files. Our technical support group examined the machine and found a virus. Puzzled as to how a virus could have been introduced into a protected machine, they examined the various pieces of software in the office. It was found that the virus had come from the disk that had been used to install the password protection software onto the machine (in an attempt to protect the machine from viruses). Unfortunately, the anti-virus software they had on hand needed to be loaded from a bootable floppy disk to prevent infection of the diskette. However, as previously mentioned, the security software had disabled the boot function of the floppy disk drive. They finally ended up reformatting the entire drive to get rid of the virus.

While working on the helpdesk of a local community college, I came across a message on one of our tech support forums. The author of this message was convinced that there was a virus in his BIOS, and he later started accusing us of sending him it. He was convinced that our computers were sending the virus straight to his hard drive through the "modem subcarrier" (his words) between keystrokes while he was dialed in to his shell account.

The computer security people at one large organization warned everyone of the dreaded "RedTeam" email virus, including a printout of the dire warning they had been sent concerning it. All attempts to let them know that (1) viruses can't be sent by email (outside of an attachment, anyway), and (2) the innoculation software provided for it is allegedly a very real virus, were merrily ignored. (The BubbleBoy virus can be sent by email. It is a Visual Basic script which runs when an infected email is opened and replicates by sending itself to everyone in your Outlook Express Address Book).

I checked my email one morning when getting into work and read a message from our Human Resources department warning us about the latest dreaded email virus. After laughing myself silly, I decided to reply, just to have some fun with them. I asked them for more information on the "virus" so I could protect my system.

They told me what to look for by forwarding me a copy of the email message that was supposedly a virus.

(The common "stoned" virus displays this message on infected computers.)

Once, in the computer cluster, a student asked me to move my disks because they were close to her own, and she didn't want them to catch a virus.

I received a call from the PA to the Finance Director, (the owner of 28% of our tech support calls for that year). She reported that one of her floppy disks had caused our virus checker to flash a very alarming message. I asked her to put the disk to one side until I arrived. When I made it to her office, I was directed to a corner desk where a disk box had been set up with a yellow post-it note reading "Quarantine." She explained she had put the disk in this separate disk box so it wouldn't infect the other floppies.

A customer came in to the store one day with a Macintosh. I had just replaced a bad drive in the thing a few days previously. She complained that it wasn't working again, implying that I didn't fix it right the first time. So, I get out the diagnotic tools, but can't find a thing wrong with it. I then checked some of the diskettes she brought in with it and find that they are loaded with viruses. After cleaning up the diskettes, I explained to her that her computer probably got the virus by trading diskettes with someone whose computer was also infected. She then got a very sullen expression on her face and asked me, "Can a person catch this virus from their computer?"

The computer service tech where I work told me he got a call from a secretary complaining that the floppy drive in her computer wouldn't work. He went down to check it out and found that she was putting the discs in with the plastic dust sleeves still on them. He asked her why on earth she was doing that and she said, "Well, I didn't want my computer to get a virus."

I work for the internal tech support of a company. One day I received an amusing call.

This was definitely worth a trip to his office. When I got there, I saw an anti-virus warning, which included a graphic of a hand holding a bug. I explained that the anti-virus software had discovered a virus on his system.

I cleaned the virus off his system and told him his computer was feeling better now.

I received a call from a woman. She had been told in a previous call that her computer was infected by a trojan virus and wanted to know where to begin disinfecting the computer. I asked her what software she was using, but she sounded a little confused. After a few minutes, I learned that she had dismantled her computer and was preparing to wipe everything down with Lysol, a disinfecting cleaner.

It took me another minute to compose myself and try to tell her to stop before she ruined her computer. I don't know if she did, as I never heard from her again -- and it took me ten minutes to stop laughing.

I walked into the English department's computer lab one day and saw two English teachers staring blankly at a computer screen that contained the message, "Non-system disk error; Remove and press any key." One of them confidently said, "It's got to be a virus -- those damn kids are always putting those things on our network."

A friend of mine once found a boot sector virus in one of his computers and had tried to repair it by changing the motherboard. He was getting frustrated because the virus kept reappearing.

Several years ago my job at the time was to support testing of a group of custom microelectronics products. This involved working with several of the customer's programmers, one of whom obviously knew everything (just ask him) and was a gift to the programming world (ask him again). Naturally, he wasn't very popular.

One day while this fellow was at lunch another programmer modified the prompt command in his AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (This was during the DOS days.) The modification changed the default setting to one that showed a Bart Simpson face, complete with flashing eyes.

The "gift to programming" returned from lunch. After a few minutes of quiet mutterings, he jumped up and ran around warning everyone at the top of his lungs that there was a virus in the system.

I worked for a health insurer that was making the big move from PCs to networked PCs. They hired a network administrator whose mindset was security above all -- he was somewhere far to the right of General Patton. One facet of the conversion was the changeover from Okidata dot matrix printers to HP Laserjets. We were using DisplayWrite, which stores the printer information with the document file.

Inevitably, a nurse tried to print an Okidata-formatted document on a Laserjet, producing pages of gibberish. Panicking, she called the network administrator.

He took one look at what was printing, bellowed "We've got a virus!" and, before anyone could figure out what was happening, had reformatted her hard drive.

I was in the local Circuit City store, when I saw a demo Sony Playstation game unit, and I went over to try it out. The controller would not work -- it had apparently been disconnected from the game unit. I told this to a passing salesman, and he said, "Oh no sir, it doesn't work because the controller has a virus."

I asked him how he thought the controller contracted the virus. He said it was because the display used to be near the computer section of the store, and they had moved it away from the computers "to see if it would get better."

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