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It was on both the CNN and MSNBC Web front pages for a couple days. Oh, and the New York Times gave it big coverage too. The AP wrote a dozen stories on it and even tiny Connecticut papers mentioned it. Was it the Yugoslavian bombing? The Columbine school shooting? No. It was the Chernobyl virus.
Named after the meltdown that shattered Ukraine so many years  ago, the Chernobyl virus causes havoc in every computer it infects... It'll delete the first sector of your hard drive and reconfigure your BIOS, preventing your computer from starting up.
The Chernobyl virus was hyped endlessly in the media -- even though other important stories should have dominated the news. The end result, however, was small (much unlike the actual Chernobyl disaster). CERT reported that only a few dozen computers were affected in the United States... and the most affected area in Asia reported only 150 cases.
So why all the coverage? And why did the Chernobyl virus fizzle as it did?
For one thing, computer security is becoming more mainstream. It's an accepted topic of discussion for both geeks and non-geeks. When I tell people that I'm involved in computer security, 90% of them are fascinated. They ask me everything they can -- then they ask me to secure their computer.
This marks a new level of awareness in the public -- and a new level of paranoia. The fact that so many people were concerned about Chernobyl also says that more important documents are being kept on computers. But paranoia is still the word of the day -- people who hackers (crackers) couldn't care less about are worried about their data security.
The news media is just playing off this paranoia... and the virus protection companies are loving it. McAffee got to look like the good guy when they started offering a Chernobyl fix for free off their website.
Without a doubt, the virus companies are loving this newfound paranoia. Everyone's concerned about computer viruses -- and most have no real reason to be concerned.
With all of this said, however, a little dose of paranoia can be a good thing. Protecting your data -- no matter how innocuous it is -- is essentially a good practice. And, with that said, get out there and download the McAffee fix so that you don't get burned the next April 26th.
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