Information Technology

Information Technology

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Information Technology

             The Alabama computer virus is a historical program that infected and copied itself on numerous personal computers. Discovered in 1989 in Jerusalem, at Hebrew University, it was one of the world’s first successful viruses in the information age. It was successful since it had odd behavior in infecting the executable files. It targeted the memory resident of the random access nature while its emphasis was on the read only permanent dimension. It increased the file sizes of all executable extensions once the infection was complete and replacing the appearance of similar interfaces (Parikka, 2007). The origin of the file is then truncated with a differential name and address as opposed to the source locater. The virus was successful due to the limited knowledge at the time of the widespread users and the demand of executable program files in personal computers and business entities.

            Its success in today’s environment would be very rare. The use of antivirus programs and preventive measures with sophisticated systems in the modern world would not permit the existence of the virus. The executable files in the operating systems today do not accept truncating of the destination on memory avenues. Secondly, with the advent of information at relative ease, suspicious names of files are fist run through before storage. Thus, limited reviews and preference of the virus would have eliminated its use. In addition, the basic input and output systems of the operating systems in use today disable and enable guaranteed file extensions according to the requirement of operation. Thus, functionality of the virus would be rendered useless by the extension address and source. In the present, the virus could not survive the updated versions of shields and enabled protective mechanisms.

Reference

Parikka, J. (2007). Digital contagions: A media archaeology of computer viruses. New York: Peter Lang.