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Higher Computing & Info Systems - Viruses

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Mark Tennant

Wednesday 01 November 2006

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!

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