Dangers of the Internet

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Dangers of the Internet

There are many pitfalls and perils on the Internet. Some of them are easy to avoid while other are not so obvious. Some of the Pitfalls and perils are annoying, while others are deadly to your computer. Still others are humorous and entertaining. There are many dangers on the Internet. This paper will try to cover some of them.

The biggest dangers of the Internet are virus. Viruses are small programs that "infect" computers. Most viruses are made to "steal" and or "destroy" data stored on the infected computer. Viruses, that destroy data, write their code into a file and when that file is accessed it rewrites itself in to more files until the virus corrupters or "infects" a file that the computer needs to run properly. This causes a crash to occur. The viruses that "steal" info are small programs that ether look for something in particular or save logs of what the computer does and what keys were hit on the keyboard. These Viruses do not usually causes crashes since they do not corrupt files with the purpose of destroying the file. With such a virus a person may be able to find out passwords and other sensitive information about their target. These viruses can become even more dangerous when the system they are on is an important system like a bank mainframe. There are some viruses that do nothing more then entertain the computer user. This entertainment can be a game that the virus launching or that changes the display of the computer such as the screen shaking, this one is called earthquake, or the picture being turned upside down or even opening your CD-ROM drive, this is called Cokegife. These viruses, thou annoying, do no permanent harm to the systems that they infect, they do their thing and the...

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...r.99.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/18935.html>

Sprenger Polly "Virus Snarls NT Nets" 5:10 p.m. 21.Dec.98.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/16981.html>

Stutz Michael "Yahoo Hack: Heck of a Hoax" 5:58pm 9.Dec.97.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/9059.html>

Sullivan Jennifer "IBM Takes Macro Viruses to the Cleaners" 5:01am 4.Dec.97.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/8938.html>

Wired News Report " FBI Warns of Melissa Virus" 9:15 a.m. 29.Mar.99.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/18790.html>

Wired News Report "Beware the Trojan Horse" 12:50pm 7.Jul.98.PDT <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/13477.html>

Wired News Report "A Cybernaut's Safety Net" 3:05pm 2.Apr.98.PST <http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/11405.html>

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