Threat
The Concept Virus was a virus that was first discovered in 1995, it was a macro that was found to infect Microsoft Word products. The virus got into the systems because it was found to be pre-installed on discs sold by many high reputation companies such as Microsoft. The virus offered a serious threat to any computer because it is a macro written in Word Basic that will run on any operating system as long as you are running Microsoft Word. The virus would then spread whenever a document is loaded up with an infected template. The macro in the template then copies the virus to the master template on the system and every Microsoft Word document will carry along an infected template.
Impact
The concept virus had major implications, mainly because the concept virus became the most common virus of its time. In the first half of 1996 it accounted for 20% of all computer viruses reported, this figure then jumps up to 1/3 for the second half of the year. At its height Concept accounted for half of all viruses reported in 1997 and by February had infected over 35,000 computers. The virus also raised fears that word documents with viruses on them could be sent and transferred to other computers, when this started to happen even more disruption was caused as people were afraid to open attachments on emails as they didn't know whether the attachment was infected or not.
Resolution
At the end of 1997 the virus was in steep decline and was no longer seen as a threat. This was mainly due to Microsoft creating discs without the virus on that could be installed, this means potentially infected documents could be destroyed from a person's computer.
References
http://virus.wikidot.com/concept
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/ConceptMacro.html
http://www.softpanorama.org/Malware/Malware_defense_history/Ch05_macro_viruses/Zoo/concept.shtml
