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"Virus Warning(s)!"

Warning: There is a virus called autoexec.bat - if you find it you must delete it immediately! AOL agree this is for real and not a hoax. Also, it is not detected with Mcafee or any other anti-virus software. It automatically sends itself to everyone in your address book, so SHOULD YOU FIND IT YOU MUST FORWARD THIS WARNING TO EVERY NAME IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK!
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And it goes on. If I sent that out, I wonder how far it would get? I wonder how many people would fall for it? And how many e-mail addresses I could spam if it gets back to me, because all the n00bs have put people's e-mails in the "To:" line, and not used BCC...

Grr... when will people learn eh?

Hmm. . .I thought Stimon had something to do with running Windows, seeing as whenever I accidentally close it, which isn't very often, the coputer locks out and I have to reboot.

Ah yes. It's for our scanner.

Hmm...

Hmm...

Hmm...

Oh yes, it's Rnaapp I'm thinking of. Apparently it doesn't like Stimon, makes it disconnect alot.

stimon.exe = Still Image Monitor

Stimon.exe enables a USB still-image device (such as a scanner) to initiate data transfer to a program. This is called "push model" behavior. For example, if your scanning device has a Scan button, it may start a program and begin scanning when you press it.

Stimon contains two modules: Event Monitor and Control Center:
- Event Monitor detects events from connected USB scanning devices.
- Control Center determines how to react to these incoming events.

Stimon is Microsoft's ppp link adaptor. Or so an Epson guy once told me.

Fog wrote:
> Makes sense, how do Virus scanner actually work, do they detect parts
> of the program (code) that we can't see, or are the viruses tagged
> with certain things, like a big flashing beacon?

Virus scanners compare the programs which seem to be doing something with the task which the user is doing. If it has nothing to do with it, and doesn't seem to be keeping the OS running the way it should, like "Stimon" does, then it sees it as a virus, I think.

Stimon is listed in the Close Program Dialog when you press Ctrl + Alt + Del

Once someone has detected and analyzed a virus, it is possible to write programs that look for telltale code (signature strings) characteristic of the virus. Remember, a virus must add its code to the infected file or boot sector. The writers of the scanner extract identifying pieces (signature strings) from code that the virus inserts. The scanner uses these signature strings to search memory, your files and system sectors. If there's a match, the scanner announces that it has found a virus. This obviously detects only known, preexisting, viruses and may result in a false virus indication (false-positive) if an innocent program contains code similar to a virus. Many so called virus writers create "new" viruses by modifying existing viruses. This takes only a few minutes but creates what appears to be a new virus. It happens all too often that these viruses are changed simply to fool the scanners. The repeatedly make small changes to a virus until the scanners will no longer detect the virus. This requires little or no programming skill but allows someone to claim they wrote a new virus.

Fog wrote:
> Makes sense, how do Virus scanner actually work, do they detect parts
> of the program (code) that we can't see, or are the viruses tagged
> with certain things, like a big flashing beacon?


It looks for the filename of viruses anywhere, it reads the code of certain files to see if they've been modified (infected), and looks for certain tell-take signs, like extra files.

Ah twain. there's a bright lad.

Probably scans code, and if it sees code telling the machine to format the HD or E-mail itself to the whole address book, pops up a warning..... and yes I was kidding :o) I know what that file is for :o).

Makes sense, how do Virus scanner actually work, do they detect parts of the program (code) that we can't see, or are the viruses tagged with certain things, like a big flashing beacon?