Higher Computing & Info Systems - Viruses

One of my favourite activites when teaching any current issue such as viruses, hacking and denial of service is to get students to search the web for recent incidents. I often use the BBC and PCW magazine as two prime sources.

Once again, this technique came up trumphs, with pupils discovering a wide range of articles relating to ethical and legal issues in ICT. My particular favourite is this one from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6100016.stm

This article raises a number of issues that Higher Computing students should be able to debate. Here are my thought/ideas for what they should be able to talk about:

• Technically, the problem the article reports is not actually a virus, it is a trojan horse (can be followed with explanation of virus being a self-replicating program)
• What technique have the writers of this malicious threat used to spread the trojan when this would normally be impossible (discussion on safety of data files?)
• How does the codec package 'fool' the anti-virus software, many of which also look for spyware threats?
• Why is this likely to be such a problem (popularity of YouTube etc, inexperience of those using the service, non-connection of the idea that a codec is a program and thus executable).

Also another interesting one that came up was this from PCW magazine:

http://www.pcw.co.uk/computeractive/news/2167543/car-park-signs-tell-residents-f

Admit it - how many times have you driven past a big orange VMS sign and wished you could 'borrow' it for a wee while!