Auburn Chapter
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With all the attention being given to the Melissa and Chernobyl viruses last month, a number of members asked for more information about protecting themselves from computer viruses at our April meeting. Chapter treasurer T.R. McKee agreed to share his experience in finding, identifying, and cleaning his computer. T.R. had begun to notice a mismatch on file sizes, but since the machine displayed no other problems, he initially suspected a hardware problem. Finally, after numerous calls to technical support people, the possibility of a viral infection occurred to him.
    A quick scan by Symantec's Norton AntiVirus pinpointed a rogue virus infecting the boot record on his computer. Norton AV identified the culprit, quarantined it, and cleaned it from his computer in just a matter of minutes. T.R. was able to identify the source of the infection as a floppy boot disk a vendor prepared and packaged with a hard disk purchased at a computer show.
    In his presentation, T.R. noted four steps you should take in dealing with a real or potential virus problem. First, realize that viruses are easy to eradicate and that most are annoying, but not necessarily malicious. There is no need to panic. Second, choose a good anti-virus program that includes frequent updates to its list of known viruses. T.R. named Norton, McAfee, and Dr. Solomon as good, commercially available programs, as well as F-Pro and Avast, which are available as shareware. Third, prepare a bootable, write protected floppy disk as a rescue disk. Include DOS-based disk management files and the virus scanner on the disk. Fourth, don't fall victim again! Having been once burned, T.R. now lets his anti-virus program automatically scan all downloads from the Internet, and all files on floppy disks, before he opens them.

    At the conclusion of T.R.'s presentation, another member, Don Carlson was able to use his laptop to show us an actual virus, which Norton AV had identified and quarantined for him. Don had sent a copy of the virus to Symantec's virus research center where its identity was confirmed. Don also was infected by a floppy disk given to him by a family member. He and T.R. joined together to urge constant scrutiny and frequent scanning.
    The Orangevale/Folsom Chapter meets on the fourth Thursday of each month at the Church of Religious Science in Orangevale, 6035 Main Avenue, between Greenback Lane and Madison Avenue, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Please join us and bring a friend.

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