VIEWPOINTS : Of Worms and Viruses and the End of Winter : Computer Bugs Aren’t Big Worry for Most Users

A few highlights from the 1987-88 computer viruses catalogue:

* A so-called Pakistani virus infected computers at an East Coast medical center, eventually destroying 40% of the patient records.

* Pennsylvania’s Leigh University Computer Center lost data in a number of hard-disk crashes and had quite a few floppy disks scrambled before a viral culprit was found.

* IBM found a Christmas virus on its in-house electronic mail network. It was a graphic of a Christmas tree that repeatedly reproduced and “mailed” itself to computers all over the network. So many Christmas trees were being sent that it significantly slowed the network.

* And Apple Computer’s Macintosh model has not been safe either--a virus was found this month in a software program sold over the counter by the venerable Aldus Inc. (More on this in a moment.)

It may sound frightening, as most newspaper accounts of almost everything do, but computer viruses, from my point of view, offer no real or immediate threat to the average personal computer user. For an epidemic to break out, it simply would require too much effort by too many skilled programmers with bad intentions.

And computer viruses are nothing new. Once upon a time they were called worms, nasty things that programmers intentionally added to software. (As opposed to bugs, which were nasty things programmers unintentionally added.)

What sort of nasty things? Oh, a worm might make a spreadsheet program come up with a slightly wrong answer every 50th calculation. Or a worm in a word-processing program might misspell a word on the second printout of a letter, but not the first or the third. Or, one afternoon without prior warning, a worm might suddenly erase the entire hard disk, leaving the user with a message: “Gotcha.” Or “See what happens when you don’t pay for programs?”

Who would take part in such pernicious activity? Two groups: The pathologically neurotic and the pathologically greedy.

The neurotics put worms on computer bulletin boards. These free, call-in services, usually operated out of somebody’s bedroom as a public service, are full of public-domain software. Those who spiked bulletin boards with worms were troublemakers apparently with nothing more productive to do with their charmed lives.

The greedy were the publishers of computer programs--or the people who sold the publishers of computer programs anti-copy protection schemes. They invented worms and threatened they might go off if someone made “unauthorized copies” of the sacred disks.

What went off instead in the face of the greedy was an outcry seldom seen in computerdom--stores threatened not to carry worm-laden software, buyers promised never to buy it, reviewers promised to pan it. The hue and cry was as deafening as it was satisfying. The arrogant businessmen who were smacking their fangs in glee were soon seen wiggling back into their holes.

The neurotics? They probably figured if they were going to take all that time to write a complicated program, they might as well do something above ground and make a million dollars while they were at it.

And the word “worm” shifted meanings, too. Someone gave the acronym WORM to a type of laser optical disc that permitted information to be written on it once and read from it many times--Write Once, Read Many.

But just when we thought it was safe to go back to the computer, a new term and a new series of horror stories surfaced. It seems that, last December, some people associated with a magazine called MacMag distributed a virus that got into many thousand Macintosh computers.

When you turned on your infected Macintosh the morning of March 2, instead of whatever you were expecting, you got: “Richard Brandow, Publisher of MacMag, and its entire staff would like to take this opportunity to convey their universal message of peace to all Macintosh users around the world.”

One hopes that the good and decent Mac users “around the world” will now and forever boycott MacMag, sending a message to all cute-as-can-be-publishers that one’s personal computer is personal , and any “universal message of world peace” is not welcome when the method through which that peace is conveyed is nothing less than germ warfare.

The ramifications of this prank were even more chilling when it was discovered the virus had infiltrated Macintosh software being sold in computer stores, not one of the usual modes of transmission.

All the same, personal computer users have little to fear. There are very, very few computer viruses, and unless the press fans the fire and makes a “me-too” crime suddenly appealing to some pathetically lonely programmers, it’s doubtful that incidents of viruses will significantly increase.

Also, most personal computers are isolated from each other and thus not likely to be exposed. They may call an information service here or take on a new program there, but, for the most part they are solitary machines, working and reworking information coming from the keyboard and sent to a printer.

Yes, those of us who use computers are vulnerable, and if the fear of viruses makes us copy our data more often than we normally might, then it has served us well. (A plain vanilla hard-disk crash is far more likely than virally inspired erasure of data.) But if we sit around worrying that somewhere inside our computer lies the electronic equivalent of viral pneumonia, just waiting to grind our computer to a congested wheeze, we’re wasting our time worrying too much.

Naturally, those who run large networks of computers must be more careful about viruses than the rest of us, but keep in mind: If someone wants to sabotage your computers, all it would take is a few casually placed magnets to wreak havoc in any computer department. If your employees really want to get you, you’ll get got.

The solution for that is not tighter security but employees who don’t want to do evil to you or your company. As of now, viruses are small-time concerns in personal computing. But enough hot press and enough overanxious software advertising (“Guaranteed to be 100% Virus-Free!”) may prove too much temptation and challenge for even a level-headed programmer. Let’s all just settle down, take a deep breath and remember that most of the viruses of winter pass with the coming of spring.