58 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
COMPUTER VIRUS HITS AGAIN
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A tiny mischievous computer program called a "virus" has popped
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up for what experts believe is the first time in retail software,
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according to a newspaper report published Tuesday.
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The appearance of the virus raises the fear that devilish
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programs created by practical jokers or vandals could be used to
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destroy computer software sold in stores, according to a story in
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the San Jose Mercury News.
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The virus found last week in FreeHand, a Macintosh program from
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Aldus Corp. in Seattle, consisted of a "message of peace"
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designed to appear on Macintosh screens on March 2, the
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anniversary of the Apple Macintosh SE and the Macintosh II,
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according to the report.
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"The time bomb already went off," said Donn Parker, a computer
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security specialist at SRI in Menlo Park. Although the brief
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pease message was harmless, its appearance alarmed experts who
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until now thought viruses were hidden only on software available
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on bulletin boards for little or no cost, or on programs shared
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by swappers, the newspaper reported.
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The "message of peace" virus originated at a Canadian publication
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called MacMag and was distributed by many bulletin boards in a
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program that purported to be a new listing of products made by
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Apple.
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The virus was inadvertently passed to Aldus by Marc Canter
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president of MacroMind Inc., of Chicago, maker of training disks
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for Aldus. Aldus would not disclose how many FreeHand copies are
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infected but said a disk duplicating machine copied the infected
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disk for three days. Half the infected disks have been
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distributed to retail outlets and the rest are in the company's
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warehouse.
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Canter was on a trip to Canada when he received an infected
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program for the Mr. Potato Head game, a computerized version of
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the popular toy. Unaware of the infection, Canter ran the
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program once and when he used the same computer to work on Aldus
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software, the disk headed for Aldus also became infected, he
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said.
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The computer virus was then inadvertently copied onto disks sold
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to customers and infected their computers, he said.
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It appears software designed by Lotus Development Corp.,Apple
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Computer Inc., of Cupertino; and Ashton-Tate may be infected by
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the virus, Canter told the Mercury News.
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From the:
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San Jose, Associated Press.
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Compliments of the
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Saginaw Valley Computer Association
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Furnished by Nancy Burdick
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