Victory Is Mine!
I have just come out of a marathon battle against an insidious and devious foe and have vanquished my enemy. The antagonist? - he comes by many names - the Vundo Virus, Virtumonde, WinFixer, SysProtect - and he is one nasty bastard. I was barely able to even boot up in SafeMode - and then when there I tried to delete one of the tell-tale files and I got a "Cannot delete - file in use" message - in Safe Mode - that's what a nasty bugger this one is. If you find yourself getting these WinFixer/Sysprotect pop-ups harrassing you, send me an e-mail and I'll try to help you out. If you're familiar with dealing with this vermin, I'd be interested in any insights you might have.
I'm wondering though - do computer viruses (I'll ignore the virus/worm/trojan horse-distinction - let's just agree they're cyber-pathogens) behave like DNA-based viruses? For example, are excessively destructive computer viruses doomed to short lives because they kill off their hosts to soon before they can replicate? Do they conform to a virtual-reality version of Koch's Postulates?
I'm wondering though - do computer viruses (I'll ignore the virus/worm/trojan horse-distinction - let's just agree they're cyber-pathogens) behave like DNA-based viruses? For example, are excessively destructive computer viruses doomed to short lives because they kill off their hosts to soon before they can replicate? Do they conform to a virtual-reality version of Koch's Postulates?
posted by ziel | 9/05/2006 11:41:00 PM
4 Comments:
The worst are the two-phasers: the executable takes over a gene synthesizer and makes a wet virus that still contains a copy (in nucleotides) of the machine-executable part; which virus then spread by sneezing, screwing, and other forsm of host manipulation. Then, when some doc does diagnostic sequencing of the odd venereal flu, the executable takes over the processor in the sequencer and runs off into the Internet, laughing like hell.
Insidious, I call it.
Huh. Well I have been feeling under the weather lately...my jubilation was perhaps premature.
Insidious...Indeed!
A long time ago, I had the pleasure of seeing a compelling cinematic masterpiece starring Robert Urich, enititled "Ice Pirates". Set against an intergalactic resource war being waged over water, the film's antagonist was a horrifying organism called a Space Herpe.
When I first discovered the internet several years ago, and began hearing of a popular online activity called "cybersex", and aware of the many news media reports warning of a rapidly proliferating, vaguely menacing computer thingy called a "virus", I became convinced that there was a new Public Health Danger of potentially 1919 Spanish Flu-like epidemic proportions on the horizon: CyberSpace Herpe.
Just like those sheepishness-feigning little tarts on the Valtrex commercials, no one can say that they weren't warned to "use protection".
Oh, and you can't make a real analog of the human immune system because the human immune system attacks any foreign antigen, so you could never install any new software on your computer.
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