Re: Windows 95/Internet virus?

Bruce Carter (bcarter@mentor.idbsu.edu)
Mon, 15 Apr 1996 00:56:47 EDT

At 3:45 PM 4/14/96, TyAnn Morehead wrote:
>Yesterday when I mentioned to a consultant (who is the former computer
>coord/math teacher from our high school) that we were planning a direct
>Internet connection to be installed this summer, he strongly urged me not to
>access the Internet through our network but use stand-alone modem
>connections. He told me that there was a virus that was coming from the
>Internet and "finding" Windows 95 machines and causing enormous problems. My
>question is: Have any of you heard of/experienced such a virus? Prior to this
>year my experience has been limited to Macs/AppleShare. When this teacher
>retired to become a consultant my job was expanded to include the high school
>Novell network.

This is nonsense, TyAnn, I can't imagine what the consultant was thinking.
I haven't heard of any virus that's Internet specific and hunts for Win95
machines, but even if there was, there's nothing in a modem connection to
the Internet that's any different than a direct network connection other
than the speed (and some underlying communications mechanics that wouldn't
make any difference in this case). And just accessing the Web/Internet
can't get you a virus (although Java and JavaScript may change that), you
have to download and run an infected program, or in the case of macro or
script viruses, download and open a document with a macro or script
attached in an application that can run the macro or script (this is pretty
much limited to Word on both platforms, although there are a few lame
HyperCard (stacks are technically documents) viruses as well).

Is this guy selling modems or dial-up Internet service? *heh*

--
Bruce Carter, Instructional Software Designer     (208)385-1851@voice
Boise State University, Boise, ID  83725          (208)385-1856@fax
http://mentor.idbsu.edu/BruceCarter/home.html     bcarter@mentor.idbsu.edu