Part 24 (1/2)
”Where did you get this?” bellowed Max as he strutted across the plush carpet holding the diskette in his hand
Pierre waved hier to indicate just a minute Pierre cut the reporter short on an obviously contrived weak excuse He promised to call back real soon He meant that part He would call back
”Pierre, where did you get this?” Max asked again
”Nowhere What's on it?” he demanded
”Viruses Lots of 'eious?” Pierre was being genuine
”No you Frog idiot Computer viruses”
”What is a co you are ol' buddy You're in for a lesson now Sit down” Pierre obliged This was Max's turf
”Here goes If I lose you, just holler, ok, Ao, but he had never asked Max to stop Besides, noasn't the appropriate tihten Max as to the ins and outs of nick nareement
”Computers basically use two type of information One type of information is called data That's nu records whatever The second type are called programs, eaks call them executables Executables are almost alive The instructions contained in the executables operate on the data Everything else is a variation on a theram to make it work Everyone knows that What about these?”
”I' there Hold on There are several types of executa- bles, some are COM files, SYS and BAT files act like executables and so do some OVR and OVL files In IBM type computers that's about it Apples and MACs and others have siine a prograned to copy itself onto another program”
”Yeah, so That's how dGraph works We essentially seam our- selves into the application”
”Exactly, but dGraph is benign These,” he holds up the disk- ette, ”these are contaminated They are viruses I only looked at a couple of them, disasserams were on your computer, 3 years from now, the entire contents of your hard disk would be destroyed in seconds!” Pierre was stunned It had never occurred to hiram could be harmful
”That's 3 years frora new”
”It doesn't matter The viruses I looked at here copy thera at all except copy theram on your computer, I mean every one would be infected, would be sick Every one would have the same flu if you wish And then, 3 years from now, any computer that was infected would destroy itself And, the virus itself would be destroyed as well Kind of like jap kamikazes from World War II They know exactly when they will die and hope to take a lot of others with them In this case the virus co distance, so to speak, goes too”
”So why doesn't so for viruses and come up with antidotes?”
”It's not that siuise it- self The ones you gave me, at least the ones I disassembled not only hide themselves, but they are dormant until activation; in this case on a specific date” Max continued the never ending education of Pierre ”Besides, it's been proven that there is no way to have a universal piece of software to detect viruses
Can't be done”
”Whewwho corasp the i
”Used to be a UNIX type of practical joking; try writing a pro- grarae, just eame of one upmanshi+p within universi- ty computer science labs I saw a little of it while I worked at the school coans These though Wow Deadly Where the hell did you get them?”
Pierre was in a quandary Tell or don't tell Do I or don't I?
He trusted Max implicitly, but what about the threat Naw, I can tell Max Anything
”homosoto”
”What?” asked Max incredulously