Fighting Computer Viruses; November 1997; Scientific American Magazine; by Kephart, Sorkin, Chess, White; 6 Page(s)

Computer viruses have pervaded popular culture at least as successfully as they have the world¿s computer population. Capitalizing on the same fearful fascination with man-made life-forms that Mary Shelley tapped in Frankenstein, viruses have become the subject of widespread urban legends and hoaxes, popular television shows and movies. Yet they have not received much scientific scrutiny.

Much of their popular presence is attributable to an obvious but deep biological analogy: computer viruses replicate by attaching themselves to a host (a program or computer instead of a biological cell) and co-opting the host¿s resources to make copies of themselves. Symptoms can range from unpleasant to fatal. Computer viruses spread from program to program and computer to computer, much as biological viruses spread within individuals and among individual members of a society. There are other computer pathogens, such as the "worms" that occasionally afflict networks and the "Trojan horses" that put a deceptively friendly face on malicious programs, but viruses are the most common computer ill by far.