Viruses

The 1980's saw the advent of widespread (and potentially damaging) computer virus infection of both personal computer and mainframe systems. The computer security field has been comparatively slow to react to this emerging situation. It is only over the last two years that a significant body of knowledge on the operation, likely evolution and prevention of computer viruses has developed. A Pathology of Computer Viruses gives a detailed overview of the history of the computer virus and an in-depth technical review of the principles of computer virus and worm operation under DOS, Mac, UNIX and DEC operating systems.

Microorganisms, viruses, and computer programs encode all the information necessary to reproduce and spread themselves. Yet these mechanisms are amazingly similar in the animate world, in the world of viruses, and even in the world of technical systems. The book shows how great the parallels are between these various animate and inanimate replicating systems and what they are based on.

In 1963, the first edition of Chemistry of Viruses was published as a contribution to the series on viruses sponsored by Protoplasmatologia. An aim of the first edition was to review some major principles and techniques of chemical virology in a concise manner and to accompany this review with a compilation of pertinent references. It was anticipated that this exercise would be helpful to the author in his teaching and research and, hopefully, would be useful to readers as well. The literature of virology has grown enormously since then, and it is even more urgent to have a succinct survey. In addition, few authors have attempted to integrate the findings pertaining to the various major classes of viruses (that is, animal, bacterial, and plant viruses) but, rather, have chosen to assemble large monographs dealing in depth with facts and fancies pertaining to specific groups of viruses. Such works are valuable for pursuit of particular topics but fail to yield a brief, integrated view of virology. The present edition of Chemistry of Viruses aspires to such a review. A serious attempt was made to deal concisely with every major topic of chemical virology and to present examples from different classes of viruses. Numerous references are given to original articles and review papers as well as to selected books.