BEGPAN7.CVP  931103
 
                        Getting Information
 
My ego does not extend so far that I think this is the only source
of information on viral programs that you will ever need.  I am only
too well aware of the limitations of my material.  Having reviewed
most of the rest, however, I am also aware of their limitations.
 
I perhaps overstated the case regarding the necessity for online
information sources, but not by much.  There are two monthly
journals, Virus Bulletin and Virus News International.  Both are for
the very serious researcher, and academic in tone, with subscription
prices in the $150 to $250 range.  (My own V.I.R.U.S. Monthly and
V.I.R.U.S. Weekly, unfortunately, fall into a similar price range,
although concentrating more on news and gossip.)  Of the two, VB has
somewhat the higher reputation and promotes an annual conference
which also has a good name.  Be aware, though, that both
publications have links to product vendors, and thus product reviews
may be slightly suspect.
 
Other vendors produce newsletters on a less ambitious scale.  The
ones I have seen here had very sporadic publication schedules and
very little information of value, being confined to announcements of
new product releases.  In any case, you have to be a customer to get
the mailings.
 
You will probably want information on the various specific viral
programs.  This is a constant battle, given the thousands of known
viral programs and variants, and the hundreds of new ones produced
each month. In the MS-DOS world, the reference usually mentioned
first is the "Virus Summary List" maintained by Patricia Hoffman. 
This is a shareware data base, which goes under the name
VSUMXymm.ZIP, where ymm is the last digit of the year and a two-
digit month.  Thus, VSUMX309.ZIP is the file for September, 1993. 
VSUM is probably the most extensive list of MS-DOS viral programs,
but has an unfortunate reputation for inaccuracy.  A rival program,
the "Virus Information Door," is suspected of being linked to virus
exchange groups and is, in any case, almost unavailable apart from a
direct call to the author's BBS.  An alternate source of information
is the good, but aging, list in "PC Viruses" by Alan Solomon
(published by Springer-Verlag).  An updated and more comprehensive
version is contained in the documentation for "Dr. Solomon's Anti-
Virus Toolkit."
 
For Mac users, there is a hypertext virus encyclopedia which should
be available on many boards.  However, for any of the other
microcomputer systems, or for the most accurate listings, the best
source is the "Computer Virus Catalog" produced by staff associated
with the Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO) and the
Virus Test Center (VTC), and available from the ftp site at the
University of Hamburg.  This has had unfortunately limited
distribution outside of the Internet, and is quite restricted in the
number of MS-DOS samples catalogued, but is generally most reliable.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993   BEGPAN7.CVP  931103

==============                      ______________________  
Vancouver      ROBERTS@decus.ca    |    |     /\     |    | swiped
Institute for  Robert_Slade@sfu.ca |    | __ |  | __ |    | from
Research into  rslade@cue.bc.ca    |    | \ \    / / |    | Mike
User           p1@CyberStore.ca    |    | /________\ |    | Church
Security       Canada V7K 2G6      |____|_____][_____|____| @sfu.ca