McAfee AVDCDE-BA-CA User Guide - Page 12
Macro viruses, On the frontier - communications
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Preface Macro viruses By 1995 or so, the virus war had come to something of a standstill. New viruses appeared continuously, prompted in part by the availability of ready-made virus "kits" that enabled even some non-programmers to whip up a new virus in no time. But most existing anti-virus software easily kept pace with updates that detected and disposed of the new virus variants, which consisted primarily of minor tweaks to well-known templates. But 1995 marked the emergence of the Concept virus, which added a new and surprising twist to virus history. Before Concept, most virus researchers thought of data files-the text, spreadsheet, or drawing documents created by the software you use-as immune to infection. Viruses, after all, are programs and, as such, needed to run in the same way executable software did in order to do their damage. Data files, on the other hand, simply stored information that you entered when you worked with your software. That distinction melted away when Microsoft began adding macro capabilities to Word and Excel, the flagship applications in its Office suite. Using the stripped-down version of its Visual Basic language included with the suite, users could create document templates that would automatically format and add other features to documents created with Word and Excel. Other vendors quickly followed suit with their products, either using a variation of the same Microsoft macro language or incorporating one of their own. Virus writers, in turn, seized the opportunity that this presented to conceal and spread viruses in documents that you, the user, created yourself. The exploding popularity of the Internet and of e-mail software that allowed users to attach files to messages ensured that macro viruses would spread very quickly and very widely. Within a year, macro viruses became the most potent virus threat ever. On the frontier Even as viruses grew more sophisticated and continued to threaten the integrity of computer systems we all had come to depend upon, still other dangers began to emerge from an unexpected source: the World Wide Web. Once a repository of research papers and academic treatises, the web has transformed itself into perhaps the most versatile and adaptable medium ever invented for communication and commerce. Because its potential seems so vast, the web has attracted the attention and the developmental energies of nearly every computer-related company in the industry. xii McAfee VirusScan Anti-Virus Software