The previous upgrade, from Now Utilities 3.0 to 4.0, was torture. Many users experienced crashes; most felt anger over the upgrade charge coming so soon

Technical Support Coordinator, BAKA Computers According to an announcement from Gene Spafford at Purdue University, Macintosh virus-busters now face two new variants of existing viruses

Gatekeeper 1.2.7 is a set of Macintosh system extensions (INITs) and related control panels (cdevs) that, when active (i.e. allowed to install themselves during the boot process), offer protection against attacks by all viruses known to the author at the time of this release. Gatekeeper also monitors computer activities for what are considered to be suspicious 'events' or 'operations,' in an attempt to intercept what could be variants of known viruses or even completely new viruses. Since its initial release in January of 1989, Gatekeeper has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to stop the spread of viruses which were unknown during its design

Users of Gatekeeper 1.2.6 will soon receive a warning stating that 1.2.6 is out of date and should be replaced with a more recent version. This warning appears automatically when modern versions of Gatekeeper exceed six months in age and is intended to prevent people from unwittingly depending on obsolete versions of the program which may no longer offer effective or safe protection from viruses

These things come in fits and spurts. We went a long time without a new virus, and the world was a better place for it. Then wham, two viruses within a few weeks of each other

Just after I wrote last week that the Mac world hasn't seen a virus in some time, one has to pop up. The latest and slimiest entry into the virus hall of infamy (I know some people who are in a kneecap-breaking mood over this one) is called MBDF after the resource that it uses to infect System files and applications

There has been some discussion recently of problems with System 7 Tune-Up, most notably in concert with Ethernet boards and MacTCP. The problems appear to be isolated to just a few people, however, and Apple strongly recommends that everyone using any flavor 7.0.x install System 7 Tune-Up

A variant of the INIT-29 virus was recently discovered, according to an announcement from Professor Gene Spafford at Purdue. The new virus strain, dubbed INIT-29-B, behaves similarly to the original INIT-29, which appeared in late 1988

According to a bulletin from Professor Gene Spafford of Purdue University, a new Macintosh virus was recently discovered by Mac users in Italy. This virus, dubbed "INIT-9403," has the potential to erase information on hard disks attached to infected computers. The virus apparently was initially spread through altered versions of pirated commercial software

The installation went smoothly - simply a matter of copying the appropriate files to the system folder. That's when the fun began, in part because the manual never talks about disabling shareware versions of the various utilities, a number of which I used

It's a fine week when I don't have to write about the latest and slimiest virus on the block. However, there is a small piece of news that everyone should be aware of

Well, it happened again. A new virus showed up and Disinfectant was promptly updated by its erstwhile author, John Norstad (who at this point might well be elected King if the Macintosh community was voting)

This is getting depressing. Two new viruses have appeared in Ithaca (kudos to Don Lee, a student computer supervisor at Cornell for first identifying them), one a simple clone of the MDEF virus, the other a take-off on the irritating WDEF. The first virus, MDEF B (Top Cat) is exactly the same as MDEF A (Garfield) except that it can bypass the protection afforded by the Vaccine INIT

John Norstad just released version 2.0 of Disinfectant, his excellent virus checking and removal program. Disinfectant is completely free and is available from most online sources