ABSTRACT
DURING THE PAST FEW YEARS, more than 4000 distinct types of computer viruses have been identified. It is beyond the scope of any chapter to cover more than a handful of viruses; however, this chapter focuses on the operating characteristics of viruses. Armed with a basic understanding of how viruses work, the data center manager can more easily identify symptoms of a virus’s presence and initiate corrective action. This chapter also discusses why updating a virus protection program is critical and, if not maintained, how that program can provide a very false indication of protection. Because the design of most types of attack software are structured to operate on the logical organization of data stored on disk, this chapter begins with a tutorial concerning data storage.
