Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Virus envy
Author: Joe Posted: 6/29/1999; 3:25:49 PM Topic: Virus envy Msg #: 7950 Prev/Next: 7949 / 7951
After reading Dave was sent a virus it got me thinking: Why do I check my system for malicious software everyday?I realise now, that it isn't to protect my data - but to see if I got one!
Of course it isn't enough to find any old virus on my system - I want to be sent a really cool one. Melissa would have been cool. but I never saw her. The latest explore one is the height of cool - perhaps someone could forward it to me ;->
I've only ever seen three virii in real life. The first was on a pc at my varsity computer lab when I was a tutor. A student had an infected floppy and the av software wouldn't let the disk be used. I think it was the Junkie virus which was pretty common back then.
The next one I saw infected a friends machine. She had let someone use her pc. One reboot with the floppy in the drive later and the pc wouldn't work. Being the only geek she knew, I was called in to resucitate the computer. McAfee and a check of the bios managed to get it going again.
My third experience with a virus was the funniest. I applied for a job through a recruiting agency. I sent them my resume which was passed on to the employer. At the interview I noticed all the formatting was weird. The interviewer said that they always had that problem with documents from recruiters and they paid no attention to it. I got the job and had been working for about 2 or 3 days when new av software was installed on all our PCs. Lo and behold my manager found a virus. It was in the word document containing my resume!
Had it been found a week earlier I probably wouldn't think getting a virus is cool!
Joe Mahoney
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