Word: viruses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Comparisons with germ 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...
...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...
...some cases, the threat of a virus is enough to spread panic. When scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab were warned by a Government security center last May that a virus lurking in the lab's 450 computers was set to be activated that day, many users stopped work and began feverishly making backup copies of all their disks. The warning of a virus proved to be a hoax, but in such an atmosphere, says Chuck Cole, Livermore's deputy computer- security manager, "a hoax can be as disruptive as the real thing...
Industry experts are concerned that the publicity surrounding virus ) infections, like the attention given political kidnapings, could invite more attacks. "When we talk viruses, we create viruses," cautions Robert Courtney, a computer consultant from Kingston, N.Y. "We almost make it a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...ranks of those who would dismiss the virus threat as a Chicken Little scare are getting smaller with every outbreak. Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development and now chairman of ON Technology, became a believer when some of his associates were infected. "It isn't the fall of Western civilization," says Kapor, "but the problem is real and the threat is serious." Scientific American's Dewdney has had a similar change of heart. "At first I thought these new outbreaks were much ado about nothing," he says. "But I'm now convinced that they are a bigger threat than...