Computer Worm & Virus: A Definition and Important Information To Understand

It seems these days you can't go more than a week or two at most without hearing about a new worm or virus spreading on the internet. While you probably have a general idea what they are, you may wonder where they come from and what the difference between a virus and a worm is.

Both viruses and worms are very similar, for the most part. They are malicious pieces of software which cause a variety of problems for computer users including: causing your computer to constantly restart so it's impossible to use, emailing your personal documents to strangers, erasing your documents or your entire hard drive, or even using your computer to send spam.

The main difference between a virus and a worm is that a virus requires a person to run it for it to cause problems, while a worm spreads and causes damage without human intervention. So in other words, for your computer to be infected by a virus, you generally need to do something, like open and run an attachment to an email, while with worms your computer can be infected even if you don't do a thing.

Many viruses and worms take advantage of the frequent security holes discovered in many Microsoft programs and operating systems (Windows). Microsoft regularly releases patches to fix these holes, but many users don't know about them or don't know how to apply the patches, which leaves them vulnerable, and the patches can take weeks or months to come out.

For example, in 2003 a group of people discovered a vulnerability in Windows which worked as follows: one computer would send a special request to a second computer over and over and over, thousands of times in a second. Now the second computer was supposed to ignore those requests because they weren't coming from an authorized computer.

However, due to a bug (or programming error) in some versions of Windows, if enough requests happened fast enough, the second computer would essentially throw its hands up in the air and say "whatever you say next, I'll do!" and whatever instruction that computer was given next, it did it.

So all someone had to do was write a worm which would make those thousands of requests, the vulnerable computer would say "tell me what to do" and the worm would say "install me," and the infected computer would go on and do it to the next computer, which would do it to the next one, over and over and over, causing the worm to cascade accross the world, infecting thousands of computers in minutes.

Microsoft, recognizing the problem, created a software "patch" which sealed the security hole. A month after the patch was released, someone created and released the MSBlaster worm. Because millions of Windows users hadn't installed the patch, their computers got infected, and suddenly they found they couldn't use their PCs for more than five minutes without the machine restarting.

People who used Macintosh computers, and other computers not running Windows had a natural immunity to this and most other worms and viruses. There are well over 100,000 known viruses and worms for Windows, and fewer than 70 (yes, only seventy) for Macintosh, by comparison. In fact, those Mac viruses only affect very old Macs, and there is just one virus that runs on current Macintosh computers (ones running OS X) and that virus isn't considered a real threat because of the built-in security of OS X.

If you run Windows, as you must realize by now, it is absolutely essential for you to keep your computer patched with the latest security patches as soon as they come out -- although to be fair, Macintosh users should also install any security patches for their OS, for just because there aren't any viruses for OS X, it doesn't mean it's impossible for one to be written!

Beyond that, it is an incredibly bad idea to run a computer without having current, up-to-date antivirus program such as Norton Antivirus installed and running on the computer. When I say current and up-to-date, I mean that there is essentially a list of viruses that gets updated as often as every day. If your computer's antivirus software doesn't have the current list, it can't protect you against viruses and worms. So if you have a three year old copy of McAffee antivirus, you are not safe.

Even if you have a 1 month out of date copy, you're still not safe!

Then there's the question of whether you're even using the right antivirus program in the first place! In 2006, tests revealed that the top three most popular antivirus programs -- Norton, McAfee, and Trend Micro, had a staggering 80% failure rate at detecting the latest threats!

It seems that the virus and worm writers are using those three programs to check to see if the programs find the new virus. If the programs detect it, the virus writer keeps working on the virus until it gets through undetected. And then he releases it "into the wild," where it infects all the PCs using those three programs.

The best option right now seems to be a program called Kaspersky, which consistently ranks as the best antivirus program to use, with a success rate of 99.6% at protecting your computer!

Protecting your computer from viruses, worms, and the many other threats can seem complicated and time consuming to a lot of people. But don't make the mistake of ignoring the problem; protect yourself, or you could end up regretting it.

If you need a little help, take a look at my Safe and Easy Web & Email CDs that come as part of the bundle of CDs I have for Windows computers. They lay it all out, step by step, so you can easily protect yourself and avoid problems.

Computer Maintenance Tips To Avoid Problems

Computers can develop problems for a variety of reasons, and it can sometimes be hard to isolate the cause.

Problems come in two general types: hardware and software. Hardware refers to a physical part of your computer, including the keyboard, the hard drive, and the motherboard. Software refers to programs and documents stored on your computer, including the operating system (such as Windows or the Mac OS), Microsoft Word documents, images, etc.

Software problems can be caused by a variety of things, including a hard drive that is beginning to fail, power fluctuations that happen while files are being saved, viruses, or from not shutting your computer down properly.

Hardware problems can’t be caused by software; they tend to happen over time, or because of something like power fluctuations, or excessive heat or moisture. It’s essential to protect your machine with a surge suppressor, or better yet, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

A surge suppressor protects your computer and peripherals from a sudden surge in electricity, sometimes caused by an electrical storm, or because of fluctuations in voltage from the power grid.

These power surges can come through either your power or your phone outlets, so if you have your computer connected to the phone line (if you use dial-up internet access for example), any surge suppressor you use should protect both power and phone lines. There are also surge suppressors which protect your cable line instead of the phone line, for those who use cable internet access like Time Warner's RoadRunner.

If you live on the Big Island of Hawaii like I do, you know we experience a lot of brownouts, and even complete blackouts are common in a lot of areas.

While a surge suppressor is a must-have no matter where you live, it's better to use a UPS (which stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply, and has nothing to do with the shipping company) to protect your computer if you live in a place with unstable power like we have here.

A UPS contains both a surge suppressor and a large backup battery that immediately takes over if the power level drops. This protects the computer from the damage done by brownouts and can even keep your computer running for up to 20 minutes if the power goes out completely, allowing you to save your work and shut down safely.

This 20 minutes can make the difference between losing hours, days, or even months of work (if the computer turns off while you're working on a project, you can lose not just what you're working on now, but everything in the file).

If you live near the ocean or in a very humid area, rust and corrosion are a very big problem; keeping your computer in an air conditioned room will help.

Regardless of where you live and whether or not you have a surge suppressor or UPS, you should make regular backups of your important files onto disks that aren't damaged by moisture, such as CDs and DVDs.

Floppy disks and Zip disks, on the other hand, are both made of similar materials to videotapes, all of which can be ruined by mold. If you have important files on floppy or Zip disk, you should look into transferring the files to CD or DVD.

In the mean time, keeping the disks in a sealed tupperware container with desiccant packs (the same stuff that comes in vitamin bottles) can help keep them working longer.

Symptoms of a sick computer can range from occasional crashes or slow operation, to a computer that won’t turn on. The thing is, a hardware problem can start out very minor, but can get worse over time.

A common mistake people make is ignoring or overlooking problems until they get too big to fix — in the case of a bad hard drive, this can mean you can lose all of your files. This is why it’s so crucial to back your files up regularly.

Don't make the mistake so many people do: make a habit of backing up regularly before you lose important files. So many people learn the hard way; I hate having to tell people that all of their many hours of work are completely lost.

I know what it's like to lose files, too -- I'm not just a computer guy, I'm also a writer. Most of my early writing is lost forever because I didn't back up my first computer many years ago (hey, everybody was a rookie once!).

Don't let this happen to you with the valuable pictures, music, letters, emails, schoolwork, customer files, or whatever other irreplaceable files you may have on your computer.

Weathering the storm -- what to do to protect your computer and other electronics from storms and other hazards

Weathering the storm -- what to do to protect your computer and other electronics from storms and other hazards

As I write this, I'm sitting at Falcon Computers here on the Big Island, using their Internet connection. Those of you who live around here know we had a pretty huge storm on the island yesterday (although some parts of the island were lucky enough not to get it too bad). In my case, the storm was raging directly over my house for about an hour, and I even had two lightning strikes within spitting distance of my house!

As a result of the storm, we had closed roads, power outages, and cable service (including cable Internet service) was shut down for about half the island.

I'm also guessing at least one of the cell phone towers was hit too, because my cell reception was completely gone for well over twelve hours. Keep in mind, like a lot of people these days, my main phone is my cell phone!

And as of about an hour ago, my Internet connection was still down, meaning it was out for over 24 hours, leaving me unable to do any work all of yesterday, and having to hike in here to try to catch up and take care of a few things.

The timing is kind of ironic, just a few days after I wrote an article about the pros and cons of using combined Internet and telephone service packages. One of the downsides I mentioned was how if there's a storm and your Internet connection goes down, if you have Internet phone service instead of a traditional phone line, then you won't have phone service either.

Because of this, I recommended sticking with the older more time-tested technology -- in this case, a plain old regular phone line.

Well, I should probably listen to my own advice, since my business phone line is an Internet phone number, and not a regular "land line", and since my cell phone got knocked out by the storm too, I would've been completely cut off it I didn't still have a regular phone line (which I normally only use for faxes).

Fortunately, I did know the best ways to handle protecting my computer and other electronics from being damaged by the storm -- in this article I'll give you a few tips to protect your electronics from being fried during a storm, or during the aftermath.

Some of this you may already know, but there's a couple of things I'll mention that many people never think of, which can endanger your computer, TV, and other electronics if you don't take care of them.

So pretty much everybody knows that it's a good idea to unplug your computer or TV during a storm. I've also talked in a previous article about the importance of using a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply, sometimes called a battery backup) and how this protects your computer and other devices.

Even if you use a UPS or just a surge suppressor (again, a UPS protects you a lot better than a surge suppressor) you should still unplug the UPS or suppressor from the wall just to be sure -- both a UPS and a surge suppressor are designed to "take a bullet" for your computer to protect it from a power surge like the ones that can happen from a lightning strike or when the power comes back on after a storm, but it's still a very good idea to unplug anyway.

But even if you're doing this (and good job if you are!) here's what people frequently miss in these situations -- electricity, like a damaging power surge, can travel up other types of wires, too.

So if you use a dialup modem still, and you have a phone cord plugged into your computer (or fax machine, satellite TV box, etc.) a power surge can go up that and fry your electronics that way. So you should always unplug the phone cord too.

Also, these power surges can come up the cable line, so I see people unplugging their TV or cable box from the electricity, but they leave the cable TV cable (coaxial cable to use the technical term) plugged in, and this can fry their TV!

Keep in mind, if you use cable Internet service, your cable modem can get fried in the same way, and if your computer is plugged into it (and not hooked up wirelessly in other words) this is a "back door" that a lightning strike or other power surge can use to fry your computer!

So to protect everything in your house, you should always not just unplug from the power, but also the cable (TV or Internet) and any phone cords during a storm. Do that, and you and all of your electronics (computers and otherwise) should weather the storm just fine.

Hope that helps.

Take care and enjoy,

Worth Godwin

Why you're taking a gamble when you ignore error messages and odd computer behavior

A lot of people take big risks with their computers without even knowing it every day.

In a sense they're playing with fire.

Let me give you some advice that I hope you take to heart: if you start getting unusual error messages on your computer, don't ignore them.

Especially pay attention if you keep getting them frequently or regularly.

Also pay attention to other unusual behavior, like it shutting off or restarting suddenly, or odd noises -- especially clicking or ticking types of noises coming from inside the computer.

Let me tell you a story about a client of mine -- a vet office here on the island -- who made this mistake.

They'd been a client of mine for a couple of years or more, and a while ago I'd set them up with a system (the same one I recommend on my "5 Computer Mistakes" CD that you can get for free from my web site or as part of my soon-to-expire $27 deal) to back up their computer.

They were backing up regularly, just like I tell people to, so you'd think they'd be protected. But unfortunately they ignored a problem to the point where it even defeated the backup system I'd set up for them.

They kept getting weird error messages when they opened certain programs. It happened every single time, for weeks on end, but they never let me know about it or did anything about it at all.

Eventually, it got worse, and they finally called me up and one Monday I drove up to help them out, not realizing the full extent of the problem over the phone.

I ended up spending three hours up there working on it, ran out of time, and had to leave with the system -- one that was absolutely critical to their business -- "mostly" working. Which was the best I could do because of how bad the problem had gotten and because I'd run out of time.

So I went back on Thursday, the next time I was able to open up in my schedule.

I ended up there for another SIX hours, plus my travel time.

It basically took TWELVE HOURS -- at $75 an hour -- to get everything completely cleaned up.

And even though I hate laying blame, I had to tell them it was pretty much their fault because they'd ignored the problem for so long -- the problem was a bad hard drive that corrupted many files, plus several side issues that weren't directly related to the bad hard drive.

You see, if hadn't ignored the error messages they were getting, and had gotten their system looked at right away, the files wouldn't have been corrupted.

If they'd gotten their system looked at fairly quickly -- even not right away -- they wouldn't have backed up all of their files, including the corrupted ones, onto their backup hard drive, destroying all the good copies that were there.

If I had been able to go and look at the computer and use a good backup copy to "restore" from, I would've been there about an hour or an hour and a half or so, and then they would've been all set.

So if your computer is acting up, giving you weird error messages, running really slowly -- and it happened suddenly, or it gradually started to happen, get it looked at before it's too late.

It's a gamble you don't want to take.

until next time,

Worth Godwin

P.S. Something that's *not* a gamble is taking advantage of my offer to get $525.00 worth of easy computer lessons for just $27... if you act right away.

It's not a gamble because I've put a year and a half of hard work (plus over a dozen years' teaching experience) into making my system really work, and really easy. And I've backed it up with a full one-year guarantee, so you can only win if you grab it before the price goes up.

I'm also going to be including lessons in my Gold Club monthly CDs (2 months, or 4 Gold Club CDs are included in the $27) that make it easy for you to "troubleshoot" common problems. So you can avoid sitting forever on hold to find out it was something you could've fixed in 5 minutes if you'd known how, or know if it really is time to take the computer into the shop for a repair.

So go and read more, check out the testimonials, see all the details of what you'll get by going now to:

www.WorthGodwin.com

Hurricane blues - using a UPS to protect your system during storms and more

Note: I wrote this for my email newsletter August 13th, 2007, the day before posting it here.

As I write this, it's a bright and sunny day outside, with nothing to hint at the fact that we're under a hurricane advisory. Hurricane Flossie is bearing down on us and could hit tomorrow or Wednesday, so people are scurrying around all over the island stocking up on bottled water, food and other supplies.

But there's one thing they should have that most of them probably haven't thought of.

It's called a UPS -- not to be confused with the shipping company of the same name -- which stands for "Uninterruptible Power Supply", and it's an important thing to have to protect your computer even if you're not being threatened by a hurricane.

Let me explain what a UPS is, and what it does.

First off, let me back up a step and make sure you know what a surge suppressor is, since the two things are related.

A surge suppressor is a power strip with a bunch of power sockets in it that is designed to "take the bullet" for your computer if there is a "power surge".

In other words, the electricity that comes into your house is supposed to be at a certain level. Sometimes, like if there is a lightning strike, or the power goes out (like a blackout) and comes back on again, there is a "surge" of power.

Imagine a huge wave coming in on a beach -- normally the waves are within a certain level, and so are safe. But if a huge wave comes in (like a tsunami or tidal wave maybe, but not necessarily that big even) it can be dangerous.

So if a big surge of power comes up the line for whatever reason, if you don't have a surge suppressor to "suppress" the extra power, it can fry your computer's circuits -- or a TV or any electronic device for that matter.

So it's absolutely essential to at least have one of those to protect your computer and other electronics. And when you buy one, remember that power surges can come up phone lines and even cable lines (like if you have Roadrunner or other cable internet) and fry your machine that way. So when shopping for a suppressor, get one that covers everything.

So a UPS is like a surge suppressor, but it does even more to protect your computer.

A UPS basically is a big surge suppressor that has a battery inside it.

Because of this, if the power goes out, an alarm goes off (in case you didn't notice the lights go out, or it's daytime) and you have several minutes to save what you're doing and shut down the computer safely.

Every UPS is labeled with a number measured in VA -- the higher the number, the longer the power lasts. I suggest getting one that is at least 650VA.

The other benefit a lot of people don't know about that you get from having a UPS is that if you live in an area (like here on the Big Island) where the power grid is, shall we say, less than reliable, you get protection from brownouts.

Brownouts are when the power level falls but doesn't go away, so it's one step below a blackout. This can often happen without the lights dimming or anything visible happening. But it can still hurt your computer if this keeps happening.

Getting a UPS will protect you from the gradual damage done by brownouts, which you can think of as hurting your computer (or TV, etc.) the way that erosion gradually wears away at a beach.

So if you have a UPS you're protected both ways. For $100 or less, that's a good buy.

Oh, and one last thought -- another nice benefit of having one or more UPSes in your house is if the power goes out, you can plug a light into it and not have to sit in the dark!

This works best with fluorescent bulbs, of course. Since they use so much less electricity than an old fashioned "incandescent" bulb, the battery in the UPS lasts a lot longer.

A lot of times, if your TV and cable box (or cable modem for that matter, if you use cable internet) is hooked into a UPS too, the cable still works in a power outage -- so you get TV to entertain you, or maybe even the Internet!

So get a UPS or two to protect your electronics, and maybe even give you something to do on a dark night when the power's out.

until next time,

Worth Godwin