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Re: [SG] OT:Virus - no joke -Reply

At 5:40 PM -0400 6/5/98, Clyde Crockett wrote:
>In a message dated 6/5/1998 4:05:09 PM Central Daylight Time, SS@SCHWABE.COM
>writes:
>
><< *WHY* would anyone want to do this to
> someone else?  >>
>My guess is that it gives those doing it a sense of accomplisment. My
>uneducated guess is that it takes a very intelligent person to do it. Too bad
>they cannot channel that in some positive way.
>
>How DOES one transmit a virus?

Folks, my husband is computer security professional.  He's a cryptographer,
and made the papers last week after he broke one of Microsoft's security
protocols (see http://www.counterpane.com/).  He regularly attends, and
gives talks at, computer hacker conferences.

I asked him about this virus-in-e-mail problem.  He said:  One cannot get a
virus in an e-mail message.  Can't happen, can't happen, can't happen.
*BUT* viruses can be e-mailed.  There are Microsoft Word macro viruses and
Excel macro viruses that *can be sent via e-mail*.  There are probably
others.

Sending attachments (Word or Excel files, for instance) is a way to
transmit a computer virus over the net.  But viruses cannot be sent via
plain-vanilla ASCII e-mail.

These little things are called viruses for a good reason.  They, like
biological viruses, need a host cell in which to replicate and do damage.
But in the computer world analogy, the computer virus needs executable code
(that's software) to do its damage.  Plain ASCII e-mail isn't executable,
and cannot host a virus.  Make sense?

Was it Diana who suggested not sending attachments to this list?  Good
advice!  I moderate three mailing lists on a non-gardening topic and we
don't allow attachments sent to any of them.

Clyde,  you can get viruses from downloading software, or from an infected
file on a floppy disk somone puts in your machine.  PC users have more
problems with viruses; the Macintosh is relatively difficult to write a
virus for.

Hope this helps.  I have a lot to say on this topic, so if anyone has
questions, send 'em in private mail and I'll do my best.  Sorry to help
keep the list off topic.

Karen. [you guys should hear my rant about changing your passwords sometime]
--
Zone 4a, where it's been in the 60s if we're lucky, and we're all freezing
Minneapolis, MN
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