Virusi si jambo gumu: How Viruses Trick You Part 1 of 3

A flash drive in Tanzania may seem complicated with all of the viruses that can get onto them and cause every kind of problem. The problems with them that Tz computer users see every day all have pretty basic explanations, especially when they are still on the flash drive. In the next three virus tips I will explain:

1. the idea of a virus (this tip),
2. the way that most common USB Flash virus spread on to Windows XP
3. and their common hiding places.

Virus: Work is Work; Don't hate my work, it doesn't help me. Us: Take your panga somewhere else

In one sense, computer viruses are like biological viruses. Viruses have two goals:

1. To spread their instructions to other computer, and
2. To do something else

Any one virus does not want to completely break your computer with these goals. If it breaks your computer then it can’t spread from your computer to new computers and it is a weak virus. The “do sometime else” includes making our computers run slowly, do strange things, and sometimes stop working altogether. Usually after many viruses have arrived, they start interfering with each-other to make your computer very slow or crash.

Though viruses seem almost as dangerous and flexible as their biological viruses, they are written by people to spread a message, steal information, use your computer’s speed, or generally hurt Microsoft. As far as we know, no one writes viruses to deprive African school children of the opportunity to use computers but in our world, this is most often the effect.

We need to think about how viruses spread to help protect our computers from the first virus.

• In Tanzania, the common way to spread a virus is through a USB flash drive when the user runs a virus program on it by double clicking on the main drive or fake items.
• A few years ago in the rest of the world, email was the most common way to spread viruses. Here in TZ though, if you have a Yahoo email account, it already scans all your messages.
• An important and often forgotten way viruses can come is when you download new software ovyoovyo without knowing that the person or website it is coming from is trustworthy. You should be very careful when you install internet software when it isn’t from a big company like Microsoft or Yahoo. The bad software is a like fake Chinese TVs or pasi–it looks almost right on the outside but inside it doesn’t work and might start a fire.

A virus usually cannot enter the computer through music or video. It needs to be free to give specific bad instructions to the central processing unit (CPU). Running programs talk to the CPU directly but playing music & video does not. This means that viruses can pretend to be music but that real music rarely has a virus inside. Also, clicking on a real folder cannot start a virus but clicking on a program with a picture (icon) that looks like a folder can be very bad. Viruses are computer tricks-Vinakudanganya kuwezesha kazi yake. The worst trick is one most Tz users don’t even see. They click fake movies and fake folders and dirty drives without seeing the virus.

Hata usipokuwa na virus scanner, If your Windows XP computer is updated to Service Pack 2 or 3 and you are careful , then there is no reason you should get any viruses. Your computer is not giving you viruses, you are being tricked to double click and run the virus program. If people on your computer never double click or right click your USB flash drive in My Computer, then you will never get viruses. Instead, you should find, click on the Folders button at the top and then left click once on your flash drive on the left side of the window as pictured.

Screen shot showing the dangerous place to double click in My Computer. If you have an completely updated virus scanner you can worry less about this, otherwise be careful.

Why? Read the next tip on Autorun & Autoplay in Windows XP in this series on Viruses coming soon!

Some portions of this posting were written in collaboration with Aron, an A-Level teacher at Bihawana Secondary School.