Home | Articles Index

Vaccine

A virus is a program or script that is designed to spread through your computer files without your knowledge. Vaccine is a valuable stack which detects and eliminates script-based HyperCard viruses. These are viruses which spread by adding additional instructions to the scripts of other stacks.
Some viruses are fairly harmless, but others may cause HyperCard to quit unexpectedly or crash. They can also create confusion and frustration because they modify your stacks' scripts.
Vaccine was created by Bill Swagerty (billds@aol.com). Bill says, "Viruses are unworthy creations for such clever and talented people. It is my hope that the authors of script-based viruses will realize the destructive impact that pranks like this have in terms of lost time and productivity and find inspiration for more constructive contributions.
"Copycat virus spreaders, on the other hand, are neither clever nor talented. They are small-minded trouble makers, low on the food chain."
Bill makes Vaccine 3.2 available at no cost as a service to the HyperCard community. It catches and eliminates all common viruses, such as the following:

MerryXmas was the first documented HyperCard virus. It causes stacks to behave unexpectedly and may causes HyperCard to quit without warning.

Merry2Xmas is one of several viruses which are modifications of the original MerryXmas virus.

Pickle (also known as "HC 9507") is a nasty creation that copies itself into the scripts of random stacks and also copies resources (several of which are modified copies of Frédéric Rinaldi's XCMDs and XFCNs). If your stack already contains resources with the same names or ID numbers, they get clobbered. Pickle also causes crashes.

Antibody (also known as "Black Knight") is a well-meaning virus that innoculates your stacks against the harmful merrxmas virus. While it may have good intentions, it is by definition a virus itself because it spreads and modifies scripts without your permission. The newest version of Vaccine (version 3.2) eliminates Antibody.

You can download the latest version of Vaccine at Jacque Gay's HyperCard Virus Compendium site. You'll also find a listing of known HyperCard viruses and their behaviors, a discussion of how to detect, eliminate, and prevent HyperCard viruses (including custom inoculation strings for your Home stack and a handler that detects all message-based viruses), and an explanation of HyperActive Software's free virus detection services.Take a few minutes to check it out; I highly recommend it!