NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
The 2x4 and the Mule, or...
Have We Got Your Attention Yet?

by Bill Shook, Editor, December 2001
bshook1019@aol.com
(click to email author)


I decided to write this article for two reasons:

    1) There are still some who seemingly are not paying attention to virus threats and problems associated with inadequate backup, and...

    2) Although this newsletter sports 8, count 'em, member articles from 6 members, it needed one more member article to be the FIRST ALL member newsletter!, except for the Christmas Poem and Bob Click's Deals, which by this time has become a part of us (Welcome, Bob!). And...these numbers don't count the other 3 monthly business updates by 2 additional members. My thanks to all of the contributors to this issue, but also to ALL contributors month after month who make this newsletter as good as it is.

Have you noticed the increase in viruses lately? Consider Nimda, Sircam, Haptime, Magistr and Bymer that Dale mentioned, on the heals of Code Red and now the latest is BadtransB, or W32Badtrans.B@mm. Symantec lists 31 current viruses on its Threat list discovered from 10/26/01 to 11/28/01!

Are you listening?

BadtransB is a worm, comes through email as an attachment, looking for Outlook or Outlook Express, but not always (there's always the exception) and while not destructive, it installs a keylogger, a program that records what you are typing and then sends the information to the virus writer's e-mail address, which allows tracking of your personal data and hackers to put all kinds of things on your computer, including other viruses.

Still Listening?

If (or when) this happens, the only way is to start over with a clean drive. Wouldn't it be nice if you made a partition of your C drive before all of this happened and all you had to do was copy it into C? It's called BACKUP! Backup, and get a good anti-virus program and keep it updated for your own good.

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