Finally, Office 97 created an environment that was hostile to many of the original Word macro viruses and it appears that these have begun to drop off the WildList. The nature of the virus threat is by no means static, because their environment affects the various virus types. The world s computing climate has gone through dramatic changes as a result of changes in the computing environment specifically changes in Microsoft operating systems. Except for a few WordBasic viruses that survived upconversion in the wild, computer viruses, unlike true life forms, have not been able to adapt to these changes. As a result, WordBasic viruses are now threatened.
Many boot viruses are on the endangered species list.
And all but a few DOS file viruses are virtually extinct. Thus the very nature of the virus threat has changed drastically because of changes in the computing environment. We have seen the threat primary type shift from file viruses, to boot viruses, to WordBasic viruses, to VBA and Win32 viruses. This means that the chance of someone getting the older types of computer viruses is steadily decreasing. In the real world, they are moving toward extinction.