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so many that they may soon replace Bulgaria as the leading virus producing country.

As the sources of viruses multiply – from pirate boards, construction sets, manic Thai programmers, Russian and Bulgarian computer freaks – access becomes that much simpler. In the future everyone will be able to plant a virus on his ‘worst enemy’: disgruntled employees, industrial saboteurs, blackmailers, electronic vandals. We may no longer be able to trust technology. A computer program could, without warning, become an uncontrollable force, triggered by a date, an event or a timer.

One of the Russian viruses is called LoveChild. When it infects a computer the virus sets up a counter with a value of 5,000. As long as the virus remains undetected, its counter ticks down, geared to the use of the computer. Nothing happens until the counter reaches zero.

Then it wipes out the hard disk.

No one knows how many LoveChild viruses are in existence. Or how many counters are approaching zero.

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