Is your computer safe?

For many college students, the computer and access to the Internet are almost synonymous, thanks to relatively fast and round-the-clock Ethernet networks found on most campuses today. Regardless of whether you are a gaming aficionado or a German major, you are probably wired. You may check your email more regularly than your voice mail; you keep in touch with your high school friends through instant messaging, even though the "uh oh"s drove your ex-roommate crazy; you surf the Web looking for dancing babies, cool jokes, and sometimes even for school work; you are the reason why the school banned Napster off the network in the first place! No matter who you are, you're wired.

The Net is a safe place, right? You can chat pretending to be whoever you want to be. You can surf and not worry about who's watching. You can say what you want, do what you want. No one can reach through the screen in front of you and wag his or her finger at you, or do worse. You are the master of your realm. Or are you?

            The Internet was not built for mass consumption. It was meant to be a communication tool for parties that could usually trust each other, like researchers exchanging details of their work. The protocols it uses are not very security-conscious. Information over the Internet travels in little packages or packets, but the sending party can put false information about the source of the packets, thus making it very hard, if not impossible, to trace the packets back to the sender; this is called "packet-spoofing". This is just one example of how the privacy and anonymity of the Internet makes it all at once a very safe and a very dangerous place. Amongst the dangers that your poor computer has to face all the time are viruses, worms, Trojans, and hackers. The adage goes: "Forewarned is forearmed." Let us explore viruses and worms today, and we'll worry about hackers and others another day.

            Viruses are programs just like Word or Eudora. The difference is that while you install legitimate programs and they do things you want them to, viruses are usually unwanted guests, much like their biological counterparts. They install themselves in some part of your computer and usually replicate. Many viruses are relatively benign. They will cause your computer to slow down, much like when a parasite in your body diverts nutrients to itself, and they are known to display annoying narcissistic messages from their authors. At worst, computer viruses can be just as destructive as live viruses, if not more. They will wantonly destroy files and corrupt your computer's operating system. Since so much of our data resides in digital form on computers, viruses can cause huge financial losses also, and often do in terms of lost work and productivity.

            Worms are super-viruses that have the ability to spread from one computer to anther over a network. Some worms, like FunLove and SirCam, arrive via email and have the capability to send themselves to users in your address book without your knowledge. Others, like CodeRed, exploit vulnerabilities in operating systems on the Internet to jump from one computer to another. With millions upon millions of computers hooked up to the Internet, these worms spread around the world almost instantaneously. In the very recent past some of these worms caused so much traffic on the Internet that legitimate traffic slowed down almost to a halt!

            No, don't pull the Ethernet plug out yet! There are some basic steps you can take to safeguard against viruses. A lot of companies claim that that they will bleed to death to keep your computer safe from viruses. I can't vouch for that, but having a good anti-virus program is very important. Some of the most common anti-virus programs around are McAfee's VirusScan and Virex, Symantec's Norton AntiVirus, and Trend Micro's PC-cillin. There is a good chance that you received a trial copy of one of these programs if you bought your computer recently. If you like it, you can go ahead and buy it. If not, Sewanee has the license for you to use Virex on your computer, or you can use Computer Associates' InoculateIT Personal Edition, which is free. Your RCC will be happy to assist you with installing either of these programs, if he or she has not already done so. Another option you have is online virus scanners. Symantec, Trend Micro, and others offer free scanning and cleaning of your computer right from your Web browser. These solutions work fine, but don't provide you with round-the-clock protection. If you have an anti-virus program on your computer, it will usually track all files you run to make sure that none of them are infected, and if it finds an infected virus, it will clean it for you.

            The medical profession does a great job of keeping up with the developments in their field, but the closest analogy to most anti-virus programs is not to that of a modern doctor but an ancient medicine man or shaman. No, there's nothing wrong with the program itself, but the fact is that tens of computer viruses and their mutations are discovered every day. If you don't update your anti-virus program's knowledge of the latest viruses and how to deal with them, usually called it's virus definitions, it will be no better against the horde of viruses and worms on the Net waiting to infect you than a poor shaman would be against tuberculosis. Luckily, the updating is usually painless in the newest versions of anti-virus programs. Symantec's Norton AntiVirus, e.g., includes LiveUpdate which resides in the Control Panel. If you run it while you are connected to the Internet, it will automatically contact the Symantec website and check to see if you have the latest virus definitions. If you don't, it will download and install them for you without any hassle. Remember: an out-of-date anti-virus program is more dangerous than having no protection at all, because of the false sense of security it provides. Update religiously. Religiously.

            Feel free to email me at fahd.arshad@sewanee.edu if you want more information on this issue. Links to products mentioned in this article are available at http://itw2.sewanee.edu/fahd/security/.

Fahd Arshad