The Anti-Virus Book Home Page

Introduction

by Saumil Shah

Published by

The Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd.

an operation of

Welcome to the Anti Virus Book Home Page

What's this book all about?

The Anti Virus Book is your "Do-It-Yourself" guide to Computer Virus removal. There are dozens of books about computer viruses in the bookshops, but none give you the most critical information as to "how exactly do I go about removing this menace from my computer!"

This book helps you understand computer viruses in general; how they work, what kinds of flavors do they come in, what can they do to your computer system, what are the "sensitive" spots of your computer and what are the ways they can get into your system. In addition to all this (which is just the tip of the iceberg) this book also gives you methods and ideas on how to guard against virus entry and if at all they manage to infect your system, how you can analyze them and build vaccine programs against them!

Hold it! You said build vaccines?

Precisely! This is where the Anti Virus Book differs from all those other ones sitting on the bookshelves. This book actually teaches you how to safely analyze live computer viruses and write your own anti-virus programs.

But I'm no programmer! :-(

No need to worry. There is enough material for all kinds! From absolute novices to power users, from system administrators to hardcore programmers, there's plenty of fuel to power your engines. If you are a beginner you can get an excellent conceptual understanding of how exactly viruses go about doing their dirty work and how to stop them from coming at you. Also, you'll learn how to use existing anti-virus programs and be armed to show any virus who entered your system where the exit sign is! And all you programmers - this book is chock-a-block with programs. You can use your programming skills to hack open viruses, find out what they do at the lowest level and write your own vaccines to clean up the mess they make. Lots and lots of source code is given with explanations as to how each part functions. A wide variety of viruses are "hacked" in order to sufficiently arm you with techniques and ideas to go out and combat all the unknown viruses that pop up each day.

Hey, what about us Network Managers?

We were just coming to that. Some chapters of this book are dedicated to deploying extremely cheap yet efficient anti-virus strategies for small to large computing environments. Being a manager for a computing facility can be a real pain in the neck if you have to spend every waking hour cleaning up the mess made by viruses on your network. This book explains in detail what steps should be taken to get rid of the virus menace from computing environments.

And it doesnt stop here. What this book focusses on is how to get your job done in the cheapest manner. Instead of suggesting you to use high-priced software which needs to be upgraded every few weeks (don't we all hate it?) this book focusses on how to use Public Domain Software to suit your requirements.

There's a lot of good code written by experts all over the world, which doesn't reach out to all of us, simply because of the lack of marketing channels. But these programs are highly effective and can do as good a job as their commercial counterparts. This book also reviews the popular "Shareware" anti-virus programs and gives you hints on how to exploit their features to the maximum. And if there's something you want and not found in existing software - you can always write your own! To make things simpler, the book comes with a diskette, containing all the source code and the compiled programs - ready to roll!

I'm not sure...is this book really for me?

Still not convinced, eh? Tell you what - why don't you take a look at the Foreword and the Preface to see how exactly this book can help you. And if this interests you, check out the Contents to see what's in store.

Want more? Well, all you have to do is ask!

Click on the various links in this home page to see how this book can help you!!

Best when viewed with Netscape Navigator