Nick Haflinger
40hex [2]
July 1991
One of the questions while writing your virus is how quickly you want it to spread. The easy answer is "As fast as possible" but this is not always the best answer. If a virus moves slowly, it will take much longer before somebody notices hard drive space disappearing, he/she will notice fewer changes to the file dates, and all other symptoms will be lessened. However, this does provide longer for anti-virus people (pronounced Scum, with a capital S) to discover the virus. This issue ties directly into the issue of activation, short or long. Since the issues are virtually identical, I will cover both together, because they are so closely tied.