Java viruses (was Re: Mail Viruses - True or false?)

[Vladislav S. Davidzon]

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Thomas Dowling wrote:
> Obvious-caveat-which-can't-be-stressed-enough-so-I'll-do-it-again: this
> is something *completely* different from the ubiquitous "Join the Crew"
> or "Good Times" hoaxes, which have been pretty thoroughly covered on
> this list from time to time.  Those hoaxes measure their success in the
> number of person-hours wasted worrying about them.  Estimating the
> average list subscriber has spent one minute reading this thread (this
> time), multiplying by about 3000 subscribers...it's a pretty successful
> little "virus" isn't it?

What I also seem to notice is that people are giving all these viruses
much more credit than what they deserve.  Most viruses are not going to 
fry your CPU or your hard drive, and 95% of them can be easily cleaned out
with a virus checker.  If you run one of the popular antivirus packages
like McAffee or Norton, you should be pretty safe from most viruses.

As Mr. Dowling mentioned, many people waste a *lot* of time worrying about
viruses that do not exist.  You could just print out a list of all the
known hoaxes and keep it by your desk.  Viruses don't do as much damage as
most people think they do.

I personally believe that security is a much greater risk than and of the
today's viruses.  Over the past two years I've ran into four viruses
which I was able to clean out within 10 minutes about about 2 hackers each
of whom took five to eight days to clean out and clean up.  Actually I
think they should start sending hackers out instead of viruses... They
tend to have a  much higher success rate and tend to do a heck of a lot
more damage. ;) 

Remember that the only reason these hoaxes have been so successful is
because they waste such a great amount of your and my time! 

Just my .02

-Vladislav