Monday, September 22, 2008

Why Virus

There is lot of similarity between Human Virus and computer virus. Both are foreign agents. Human viruses attack healthy tissues of body whereas computer viruses attack data and software present in the computer system . When white cells of the body detect the presence of virus in the body, they fight and kill the virus and the body recovers from the sickness. In case of computer virus, when a new virus enters the computer system, the antivirus software present in computer system detects and cleans the virus automatically. Now imagine what will happen if while cells in the body are weak and incapable of fighting, viruses will kill white cells in body. with the result the body will become sick and ultimately, the person will die. The same logic applies to computer virus. If antivirus software present in computer system is incapable of detecting new virus entering the system, it will slowly distroy software and data present in computer system causing irreparable damage. As new viruses keep coming, antivirus software needs to be constantly updated to be able to detect new viruses. Antivirus software is created to distroy the virus and therefore always comes after new virus is detected. It is never the other way round.
That means no anti virus software can offer 100% protection against new viruses specially if the new virus is not known to anybody.
The question that arises is who creates new viruses and why. Viruses are created to cause panic among users across the globe. Panic creates sense of urgency. If your sensitive data is under attack, you will do anything to protect it from damage. The loss to the company is enormous as recreating data is often very laborious and time consuming. Anti virus software is the only solution to clean virus. You start looking for anti virus software so that no further distruction of data takes place. There seems to be a linkage between virus software and anti virus software.
Anti virus software is in demand because of virus software. This reminds me of a movie of silent era called "The Kid". In this film, the hero who is great Charlie Chaplin breaks the glasspanes of windows of homes by throwing stones at them from distance. His collegue is standing nearby who is readily available to repair the windows. The needle of suspicion goes to thosecompanies who by creating virus software stand to gain from anti virus software.

What is the solution. How can we stop the menace of viruses which keep growing day after day at alarming speed. There is only one way which can put a brake to generation of new viruses in future and that is identify the origin of virus software through technology and sue the company responsible for generating virus software.

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