
@4     THIS TEXT SAMPLE TAKEN FROM ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO WORKBENCH 3
                WHICH IS AVAILABLE FROM F1 FOR JUST 80p@6


                            SOME FACTS ABOUT VIRI
                             @3 ------------------@6
A virus is just a small program, written by a bored/nasty programmer
and meant to cause us users a lot of hassle and sometimes money.
There are hundreds of different "strains" of viri on the Amiga.

Basically there are only two types of virus prevalent on the Amiga,
Link and Boot. I will cover Link viri in a later volume, but here I will
tell you about Boot viri as they are the most common of the two.

Some viri can format your disk, some wipe the odd file, some just flash up
an insulting message, one even reverses your mouse controls!
So, how does a virus get into your system and onto your disks?



                        #7CLICK ON 'NEXT' TO CONTINUE





                             A LITTLE STORY:@4


Fred  Bloggs  gets  a new Amiga and asks his friend Joe Brown if he has any
P.D  disks  he  can  make a copy of, unknowingly Joe gives Fred an infected
disk  he had previously got off another friend.  Anyway, Fred runs the disk
and  the virus loads in from the infected disk and copies itself into Freds
Amigas  memory.  The virus copies itself into a special part of memory that
only  gets  cleared  when  the  Amiga is turn off by the power pack and not
turned  back on for at least 20 seconds.  So a copy of the virus is sitting
in  memory,  and  the  original  virus is still on the disk.  Fred finishes
playing  the game and decides to load another disk, he flicks off the power
supply for a second or two inserts the new (clean) disk and turns the power
back on.

The  virus  has  survived  as  the  Amiga operating system didn't have long
enough  to  clear  all of its memory properly.  Fred's game is loading, the
virus  is monitoring freds Amiga for any disk activity, the virus checks to
see if the disk is write protected or not, it isn't, Great!








The  virus  copies  itself onto the new disk.  After copying itself onto 20
different disks the virus activates itself proper and lets fred know of its
presence, the virus prints a nasty message on the screen and wiped the disk
in  freds drive, the disk just happened to be an expensive application fred
bought  last week.  This will happen when each copy of the virus has copied
itself  another  20  times.  Can you see how within a few days all of Freds
disks  were  infected?   If Fred had taken a few simple precautions none of
this would of happened.
@6
* Always keep your floppy disks write protected at all times, only write
  enable them when absolutely necessary.
@1
* Use an up to date virus checker on any new disk you get before running
  the disk proper.






#7WARNING:@2
If  you  virus  check a commercial game be careful as most commercial games
(and  some  P.D games and demos) use a custom loader on the bootblock which
most  virus  checkers will detect as Non-standard, unless the virus checker
says the disk has a virus and gives you the name of the virus don't try and
kill  it.   As  a  general rule, if a virus checker says the disk has a non
standard boot block then 99.9% of the time it will be harmless or will be a
programmers  boot  loader,  if it is a boot loader and you kill it the disk
will be rendered useless.  This only applies if you use an up to date virus
checker.
@5
* When resetting the Amiga to use another program make sure you turn off
  from the power pack and wait at least 20-30 seconds. The down side of
  this is the Amiga's circuitry is at it's most vunerable to electrical
  surges when switch on from the mains.
@3
Beginners should NOT use the Amiga/Amiga/ctrl keys to do a warm reset.
UNLESS you WRITE PROTECT all of your disks.
@4
                      #7NOW CLICK ON THE 'INDEX' BUTTON

