Pat Kellogg didn't look forward to facing the harsh reality of going to work on Monday morning. This weekend had been the worst since joining the company three years ago. Over the weekend, Pat had gone into work to prepare the family's tax return using a bootleg copy of FEDTAX, a federal income tax software package obtained from a friend. Although there was a strict company rule against personal use of any office computers, Pat reasoned that this restriction was akin to the policy that prohibited using office copiers for personal duplicating, which was violated frequently.

Bright and early Saturday morning, Pat started by installing the tax software on an office computer, which the company used for its billings and collections processing. After entering the tax data, Pat noticed the system producing all types of strange messages when he printed several of the tax forms. Upon exiting the program, he noticed that the software had automatically uninstalled itself.

That Sunday, Pat's family met their neighbors, the Polks, for their weekly bike ride. Because Chris Polk was a systems programmer with a crosstown software developer, Pat picked Chris's brain in hopes of resolving what had happened. Chris had a ready explanation for Pat's problem.

Chris said, "I think that your machine has contracted a virus. The virus seems to have infected the operating system and will continue to do so until it receives appropriate treatment, which is probably an immediate and complete reinstallation of all the company's software on the computer. The longer the virus goes untreated the more widespread its effects will become. Additionally, any USB flash drives used in that machine since the infection will probably need to be wiped clean. If they are used in another computer, that computer will also become infected. In fact, this happened to us recently when a new hire used pirated software. The kid was fired on the spot."