Word: hit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Pakistani virus is only one of a swarm of infectious programs that have descended on U.S. computer users this year. In the past nine months, an estimated 250,000 computers, from the smallest laptop machines to the most powerful workstations, have been hit with similar contagions. Nobody knows how far the rogue programs have spread, and the exact mechanism by which they select their innocent victims -- resting harmlessly in some computers and striking destructively in others -- is still a mystery...
Since viruses can travel from one place to another as fast as a phone call, a single strain can quickly turn up in computers hundreds of miles apart. The infection that struck Froma Joselow hit more than 100 other disks at the Journal-Bulletin as well as an estimated 100,000 IBM PC disks across the U.S. -- including some 10,000 at George Washington University alone. Another virus, called SCORES for the name of the bogus computer file it creates, first appeared in Apple Macintosh computers owned by Dallas-based EDS, the giant computer-services organization. But it spread rapidly...
...warfare and sexually transmitted diseases were perhaps inevitable. A virus that struck Lehigh University quickly got tagged "PC AIDS." That analogy is both overstated and insensitive, but it stems from a real concern that the computer revolution, like the sexual revolution, is threatened by viruses. At Apple, a company hit by at least three different viral strains, employees have been issued memos spelling out "safe computing practices" and reminded, as Product Manager Michael Holm puts it, "If you get a floppy disk from someone, remember that it's been in everybody else's computer...
...advised readers to put their PCs under lock and key and, in one radical proposal, to disconnect their machines permanently from all data networks and telephone lines. Data-processing managers have rushed to stock up on antiviral programs. "We're seeing panic buying by those who have already been hit," says William Agne, president of ComNetco, which publishes Viru- Safe. When a virus showed up at the University of Delaware, the assistant manager of academic computing services immediately bought six different pieces of antiviral software. Then she began screening every floppy disk on campus -- some...
...past, companies that were hit by a virus generally kept it quiet. But the computer-sabotage trial in Fort Worth may be a sign that things are changing. Texas is one of 48 states that have passed new laws against computer mischief, and four years ago President Reagan signed a federal law that spelled out harsh penalties for unauthorized tampering with Government computer data. But most statutes were written before viruses surfaced as a major problem, and none mention them by name. In May an organization of programmers called the Software Development Council met in Atlanta to launch a movement...