Yep, it’s a virus.

Archived Articles, Computer Connectors

Question: Here’s some advice for all your readers, which I unfortunately ignored: Always have a good virus scanner program loaded, even if you aren’t an Internet surfer. Scan everything that goes onto a hard drive. Unfortunately, I have gotten lax, since in three years of surfing I haven’t seen even a hint of a virus.

Last week, I purchased a steering wheel for my computer to use with a racing game. The disk that came with it was infected with a virus that I believe may be what’s responsible for my primary hard drive crashing. After getting my computer running again, I installed the software again, this time with a virus scan program running, , ,and there it was, a virus named AntiCmos-A. Can you tell me what that virus does? Would it cause my second harddrive to fail?

I’ve been having some troubles with it, so I am curious as to whether this is just a coincidence that it failed when it did, or can that virus perhaps infect any hard components of the computer like BIOS chips or something? — B.B.

Answer: I hate to be the bearer of fear and loathing, but B.B.’s problem is a nasty reminder to everyone that computer viruses are lurking in the most innocent-looking places, and they can strike at the worst possible moments, like just when you’re finishing up the transcription of your great aunt’s dictated 101 Tasty Things to Do with Carp. Computer viruses are the stuff of legends, thanks to media fear-mongers like me, and the savvy of anti-virus software marketers.

The sad truth though is that viruses do exist, they do infect computers, and occasionally they can destroy data. The happy truth is that they rarely do destroy data.

A computer virus is not a biological phenomenon. I like to point that out because the husband of a former colleague was adamant that such things couldn’t exist. The concept of a germ was so entrenched in his mind that no amount of explanation could convince him that a computer program that behaves and replicates itself like a germ could exist. So, for the record — and as a public service for those just joining us in this dysfunctional computer world — here’s a definition: A computer virus is a tiny little program that is designed to move through a computer and plant itself in places where it can reproduce itself and display prank-like messages or images or computer behaviors that annoy and waste a user’s time.

Some virus varieties — in rare cases — do actual damage. They can destroy entire hard drives and render computers useless. They are written by programmers who see them as either pranks, implements of destruction, or fascinating intellectual exercise for their own amusement. This last group is depicted beautifully in the book Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier by Katie Hafner and John Markoff. One of the book’s real life antagonists is a brilliant kid who almost brought down the Internet with a piece of code called a “worm”, which is a virus that moves across networks.

The particular virus plaguing B.B. is called AntiCMOS-A, designed to erase all CMOS configuration information on the computer. CMOS is a chip where a computer keeps information about itself, so that when it is turned on it knows enough about itself to operate — things like how many hard drives and floppy drives are attached to it, and how each is configured. A human CMOS, if there was such a thing, would tell you when you woke up in the morning that you had two legs and two arms and eight fingers and two thumbs.

As viruses go, AntiCMOS-A is a bit of a loser, because it fails to erase the CMOS data due to a couple of bugs in it. Yep, a computer virus can have a bug in it, too. How? Because it’s written by a human, and humans make mistakes. AntiCMOS, according to CyberWalker adviser Mathew Fiszer of Edmonton’s Logicorp, plonks itself down in the boot sector of a computer’s hard drive or on a floppy drive. From there, it infects the master boot record, a small program that runs when a computer starts up. It cannot infect a CMOS chip. AntiCMOS spreads only when a user attempts to boot a system from an infected floppy disk, but “a boot attempt from an infected floppy will often hang the system and, since the CMOS information is altered, the system cannot be booted from the hard disk,” said Fiszer.

There are two common versions of AntiCMOS — Variant A and B. They’re both harmless. Some other facts about it, according to the Symantec Anti-Virus Center: It doesn’t use any “stealth” mechanisms, meaning it doesn’t try to hide itself from detection. It doesn’t infect files, and it can’t be transferred through e-mail, online bulletin boards, or the Internet.

B.B., I suspect that if a virus checker confirmed that you have AntiCMOS-A, then your second hard drive failure was a coincidence. If you’re now under the bed clutching your carp recipe anthology to your chest, you may want to consider an anti-virus program. One well-respected and highly rated product is BitDefender 9 Standard.

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