"When I first heard about replicating software, viruses, and this was over 15 years ago, I, as many of my graduate students did, thought of them as a curious anomaly. A benign subset of comput- er software that had no anticipated applications. We spent months working with viruses, self cloning software and built mathematical models of their behavior which fit quite neatly in the domain of conventional set theory. Then an amazing discovery befell us. We proved mathematically that there is absolutely no effective way to protect against computer viruses in software." Enough of the spectators had heard about viruses over the past few years to comprehend the purport of that one compelling state- ment. Even Senator Rickfield joined Nancy and the others in their awe. No way to combat viruses? Dr. Sternman had dropped a bombshell on them. "Dr. Sternman," said Senator Deere, "could you repeat that? "Yes, yes," Sternman replied, knowing the impact of his state- ment. "That is correct. A virus is a piece of software and software is designed to do specific tasks in a hardware environ- ment. All software uses basically the same techniques to do its job. Without all of the technicalities, if one piece of software can do something, another piece of software can un-do it. It's kind of a computer arms race. "I build a virus, and you build a program to protect against that one virus. It works. But then I make a small change in the virus to attack or bypass your software, and Poof! I blow you away. Then you build a new piece of software to defend against both my first virus and my mutated virus and that works until I build yet another. This process can go on forever, and frankly, it's just not worth the effort." "What is not worth the effort, Doctor?" Asked Nancy Deere. "You paint a most bleak picture." "I don't mean to at all, Senator." Dr. Sternman smiled soothing- ly up at the committee and took off his round horn rim glasses. "I wasn't attempting to be melodramatic, however these are not opinions or guesses. They are facts. It is not worth the effort to fight computer viruses with software. The virus builders will win because the Virus Busters are the ones playing catch-up." "Virus Busters?" Senator Rickfield mockingly said conspicuously raising his eyebrows. His reaction elicited a wave of laughter from the hall. "Yessir," said Dr. Sternman to Rickfield. "Virus Busters. That's a term to describe programmers who fight viruses. They mistakenly believe they can fight viruses with defensive software and some of them sell some incredibly poor programs. In many cases you're better off not using anything at all.