Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Chapter 2. Viruses

I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image.

—Stephen Hawking, physicist, in a public lecture titled “Life in the Universe”

“Beware of a file called Good Times,” cautioned an e-mail message circulating on the Internet in late 1994. “DON'T read it or download it. It is a virus that will erase your hard drive. Forward this to all your friends.” Although this warning was actually a hoax, it inundated people's inboxes for years, instilling fear and doubt in the minds of naïve recipients who blindly forwarded it to every one of their friends. The so-called Good Times virus ...