30 November 1998

If you are reading this outside the present time and the near future I hope that this is not a topic you have never heard of. That would indicate that society has somehow managed to solve or control this problem. Unfortunately, I rather doubt it, but I will describe the problem first in case I am wrong.

Computer viruses are analogs of living viruses. They are programs that modify other programs so that the modified program contains a replica of the virus code. Some of these viruses are fairly benign. They might do nothing other than reproduce themselves. Others may display some "cute" message to the user when they are run. Still others are malicious to varying degrees, ranging from erasing files to attempting to erase entire hard drives to corrupting the BIOS ROM settings so the computer will not run at all.

Right now there is a thriving industry for software that will detect and remove such viruses. New viruses are created frequently. It is hard to decide what constitutes a "new" virus as opposed to some trivial variant on an older one, but certainly the number is in the tens per month. The best of such detection software also has a component that stays resident in the machine and examines programs before they are run, searching for markers that identify the known viruses. In either case, the vendors provide updates of the files that describe the markers for the known viruses so users can stay abreast of the new ones.

I have little clue why anyone would produce a virus program. I suppose that the more benign ones are made just to demonstrate that the maker is capable of pulling it off. It is not so clear whom the demonstration is to. Since the infected user is most likely not known to the maker there is little chance of gratifying feedback. Maybe that's the primary reason why people create malicious ones - figuring that if they are bad enough then they will be reported in the trade or popular press and the maker can gain some measure of satisfaction from that knowledge. This is rather a small reward for such grief inflicted on other people who are innocent of any specific wrongdoing toward the original maker.