A program called MyPics and imitators target Jan. 1 explicitly. These viruses, which began showing up in December, pretend to be a photograph attached to electronic mail. Network Associates, like most makers of anti-virus software, offers free trial versions of programs online that can disinfect computers. The risk of computer intrusion is based more on speculation than on the sort of hard evidence gathered by virus makers, but the number of break-ins is definitely growing. The Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University, a federally funded clearinghouse for such reports, has tallied more than 6,844 incidents so far this year, compared with several hundred a year in the 1980s.
Experts disagree about the likeliest kind of intruder threat.
Abe Singer, computer security manager at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, said he anticipates more problems with vandals trying to shut computer systems down than with intruders seeking private information. You can do something perfectly ordinary and preventable by security people, but if you do it in large volumes you can cause problems. Spafford of Purdue sees a less urgent threat from vandals. The likelihood of any of these happening and causing great damage, he suggested, is very low, but he said the mischief-makers and criminals were the likeliest to cause problems. We're not terribly concerned about people coming in from the outside.