adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin) (02/09/91)
Thanks to all who sent me e-mail on this. Here's the story that ran in
the paper, but please read it with two caveats. I got Ilene Hoffman's
first name wrong, and she did NOT say Mac hard drives are prone to
mechanical failure (what she said was that Mac owners are less likely
to do such things as run de-fragmentation programs and I, in my Stupid
Reporter mode, tried to write something the average reader would
understand).
Adam Gaffin
Middlesex News, Framingham, MA
adamg@world.std.com
Voice: (508) 626-3968
Fred the Middlesex News Computer: (508) 872-8461
Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass., 2/7/91
Expert: Virus unlikely budget bug
By Adam Gaffin
NEWS STAFF WRITER
BOSTON - State officials say a computer virus destroyed 50 pages
of Gov. Weld's budget proposal earlier this week, but a computer
consultant with experience in fighting the bugs says it sounds more
like a case of inadequate maintenance than anything sinister.
Michael Sentance of Maynard, a legislative aide to Weld, had typed
in 50 pages of the governor's proposed budget on a Macintosh computer
when he tried saving the document to the machine's hard drive around 3
a.m. on Monday - only a few hours before it was due to be submitted to
the Legislature.
But instead of being saved, the document disappeared, according to
Liz Lattimore, a Weld spokeswoman. Sentance was eventually able to
retrieve an earlier draft, filed under a different name, minus the 50
pages, she said.
When Sentance ran a program to check for the presence of viruses
on the machine, it responded with a message indicating a ``type 003
TOPS network'' virus, Lattimore said. TOPS is the name of the network
used by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance to connect
its Macintoshes.
Sentance had borrowed one of that office's computers because he
was more familiar with Macs than with the older Wang system in the
governor's suite, Lattimore said.
Viruses are small programs that can take control of a computer's
operating system and destroy other programs and data, and can be spread
through people unwittingly sharing ``infected'' programs or disks.
Lattimore said officials managed to transfer data from the ailing
computer to another machine, adding that they are now checking all of
Administration and Finance's Macintosh computers for possible
infection.
But Eileen Hoffman of Needham, a Macintosh consultant, says what
happened to Sentance sounds more like a hard-drive ``crash'' than a
virus - something she said is potentially far more destructive.
A document that disappears when the user tries to save it onto the
hard drive usually means there is something physically wrong with the
computer's hard drive, not that it is under viral attack, Hoffman said.
Hoffman, who keeps three or four infected disks in a safe so that
she can test new anti-viral software, said the software that runs TOPS
networks is written in such a way that it can show up as a ``virus'' in
programs that check for viruses. She said a ``Type 003'' virus is one
of these phantom ``sneak'' viruses.
Hoffman said Macintosh users are often more lax about maintaining
their computer's hard drives than users of IBM compatible machines,
because Macintoshes are aimed at people who do not want to have
anything to do with the hardware of their machines. The Macintoshes
were installed during the Dukakis administration.
But even Mac hard drives require regular maintenance, she said.
She said she often gets calls from clients who blame disappearing data
or strange things on their screens on viruses, but that almost always
the problem is caused by a mechanical hard-drive problem.
She added that the particular version of anti-viral software
Sentance used is two years out of date. Since new viruses are created
all the time, this means the software might not be able to detect one
even if the machine were infected, she said.