Unit 5. Viruses multiply like rabbits

1. Read the following words correctly and guess their meaning:

programmer, industrialized, epidemics, unique, destructive, professional, teenager, vandalism, political, company, cyber-espionage, publicity, client, special, laboratories, specialize, infrastructure, organization, department, security, agency

2. Read and translate the following word combinations:

destructive program, unique ability, political reason, computer network, virus creator, viral epidemics, virus attacks, Security Institute, insurance company, debugged program, competitive purpose, unauthorized sources, to avoid publicity, special services, rival state

3. Read the text trying to find verbs connected with the sphere of writing and fighting viruses (e.g. to write viruses, …)

Viruses multiply like rabbits

There are more than 55-65,000 different viruses created by 10-12,000 programmers on the World Wide Web. The number of writers of destructive programs is growing every day, as it is fairly easy to create a virus. However, there are very few of those who fight viruses. The writers of viruses live in almost all industrialized countries of the world. Viral epidemics outbreaks took place in the countries which did not have well developed Internet systems. As an example, such epidemics broke out in Bulgaria and Pakistan. Writers of viruses sometimes tend to work in groups. The commonly known viruses are 29A, Metaphrase, YAM (Youth Against McAfee - a famous company, producing software equipment), and Phalcon Skism. According to the data provided by the Computer Security Institute, virus creators are mainly males from 19 to 35, who possess unique abilities and are professional in computer-related fields. However, there have been cases when viruses were created by teenagers. Such people are considered prone to vandalism.

There may be various reasons for writing viruses. Some creators of viruses do it for political reasons. For example, Pakistani programmers attacked Indian computer networks and the Indians in turn tried to attack the Pakistani. Sometimes the work of the whole computer company may get virus attacks; in this case Microsoft is the first to suffer. Other than that, virus creator justify themselves by the fact that they are struggling for freedom. It is also common that viruses are created out of sheer curiosity.

Cases have been known when viruses were written out of revenge. By hearsay, that was the case with a big insurance company which had once "offended" a programmer. He created and launched a debugged program that destroyed the company's database. There are claims that viruses are created and used for competitive purposes and cyber-espionage. The information about such cases comes from unauthorized sources because the companies that were injured tend to avoid publicity and not risk their clients' trust! It is also considered, that some armies and special services have laboratories which specialize in writing computer viruses to destroy and take control of the information infrastructure of rival states.

According to estimates made by the Business Week Journal, there are fewer than 500 organizations chasing virus writers in the whole world. In the US, the country with the most developed Internet infrastructure, these organizations are the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. According to different estimates, state agencies have no more than 100-150 people dealing with fighting computer viruses.

4. Match column A with column B

A	B
1. to deal with	a. быть склонным к
2. epidemics broke out	b. оправдывать себя в ч/л
3. to tend to work	c. из-за простого любопытства
4. commonly known viruses	d. в отместку
5. computer-related fields	e. в свою очередь
6. to be prone to	f. иметь склонность работать
7. inturn	g. области, связанные с компью-тером
8. tojustifyoneselfby	h. иметь дело с
9. outofsheercuriosity	i. разразилась эпидемия
10. outofrevenge	j. общеизвестные вирусы

5. Comment on the following:

55-65,000; Bulgaria and Pakistan; 19-35; Microsoft; Business Week Journal; 500; 100-150

6. Decipher: YAM; the USA; FBI; W.W.W.

7. Give the author’s and your own reasons for writing viruses