IDENTI-KIT OF THE AUTHORS:

AUTHORS: most of the authors of virus have no judicial precedents, even though this situation may be changing.

AGE: young people, between 24 and 33 years old, extremely well-qualified in programming, with a fearless and impatient temperament.

SEX: almost always male.

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING: they have been studying computers and several operational systems for years, they know Assembler Language and the "C" language and are able to make the most of their hidden resources.

IDENTIKIT OF THE VIRUS

VIRUS: it is a program attached to another program, a group of instructions executed by a computer.

CHARACTERISTICS: it was created in order to multiply; the author had foreseen the possibility that the virus would be able to reproduce. After a pre-established time the virus executes the actions that it was written for.

ACTIONS OR TASK OF A VIRUS: a virus performs operations with the intention of damaging computers (for example delete some files, format the hard disk). Sometimes with less sadistic intentions (for example: strange messages appear on the screen). Sometimes it can provoke both effects: strange messages appear for a period of time, all of a sudden the hard disk is formatted.

DIFFUSION: this happens by infecting other programs or by infecting the Boot Sector of the hard disk (which contains executive directions) or of a floppy disk, or by infecting executive directions contained in some files.

FUNCTIONS: Physiological functions - the actions that a virus has been programmed to perform (delete a file, format the hard disk, make appear inscriptions, sounds and so on ).

Reproductive functions: the actions that a virus execute to reproduce.

SYNDROME: At a certain point everyone of us wonders if a virus has infected our computer. It is natural to worry, especially when strange system messages start to appear, to verify themselves and strange phenomenons appear on the screen.

MYTHES AND FALSE VIRUS: There is a large circulation of false mythes and a real lack of information about virus. This generally happens because of not very well-qualified people or of some alarmist people; sometimes it is just a joke.

If you want to learn more about True and False virus and about alarmist e-mail messages, you find here enclosed some adresses:
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
http://www.bio.unipd.it/network/virus.html
http://www.i-2000net.it/i2000/glossario/v/ind.exe.html
http://www.kumite.com/mythshttp://www.avertlabs.com/virus_research.asp
http://www.icsa.net/services/consortia/anti-virus/alerthoax.shtml

NOTE: Why almost all of alarm-virus on internet are false alarms?

Consider that every e-mail message is an ASCII file ( ----------, they don't perform any action), therefore they cannot contain a virus (at most they carry a virus'code, anyway a virus is not active inside an e-mail message).Readind an -mail message is never dangerous, especially if you use common programs (like PINE, ELM, EUDORA, PEGASUS, NETSCAPE...).

Fonti:

http://www.bio.unipd.it/network/virus.html

http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html

http://www.bio.unipd.it/network/virus.html

http://www.i-2000net.it/i2000/glossario/v/ind.exe.html

http://www.kumite.com/myths

http://www.mediamente.rai.it/home/tv2rete/mm9899/settimanale/990615/s1_15.asp

http://utenti.tripod.it/darioforte/pages/Ntsecurity.htm

http://www.avertlabs.com/virus_research.asp