In the piece, author and computer scientist A. Dewdney shared the details of an exciting new computer game of his creation called Core War. In the game, computer programs vie for control of a virtual computer. The game was essentially a battle arena where computer programmers could pit their viral creations against each other. For two dollars Dewdney would send detailed instructions for setting up your own Core War battles within the confines of a virtual computer.
What would happen if a battle program was taken out of the virtual computer and placed on a real computer system? In a follow-up article for Scientific American, Dewdney shared a letter from two Italian readers who were inspired by their experience with Core War to create a real virus on the Apple II.
The brainchild of Pakistani brothers and software engineers, Basit and Amjad Farooq, Brain acted like an early form of copyright protection, stopping people from pirating their heart monitoring software. Other than guilt tripping victims in to paying for their pirated software, Brain had no harmful effects.
BHP also has the distinction of being the first stealth virus; that is, a virus that avoids detection by hiding the changes it makes to a target system and its files. The cover image depicted viruses as cute, googly eyed cartoon insects crawling all over a desktop computer.
Up to this point, computer viruses were relatively harmless. Yes, they were annoying, but not destructive. So how did computer viruses go from nuisance threat to system destroying plague? The MacMag virus caused infected Macs to display an onscreen message on March 2, The infected Freehand was then copied and shipped to several thousand customers, making MacMag the first virus spread via legitimate commercial software product.
The Morris worm knocked out more than 6, computers as it spread across the ARPANET , a government operated early version of the Internet restricted to schools and military installations. The Morris worm was the first known use of a dictionary attack. As the name suggests, a dictionary attack involves taking a list of words and using it to try and guess the username and password combination of a target system. Robert Morris was the first person charged under the newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act , which made it illegal to mess with government and financial systems, and any computer that contributes to US commerce and communications.
In his defense, Morris never intended his namesake worm to cause so much damage. According to Morris, the worm was designed to test security flaws and estimate the size of the early Internet. A bug caused the worm to infect targeted systems over and over again, with each subsequent infection consuming processing power until the system crashed. Victims received a 5. Joseph L. Popp, intended to draw parallels between his digital creation and the deadly AIDS virus.
In an era before Bitcoin and other untraceable cryptocurrencies, victims had to send ransom funds to a PO box in Panama in order to receive the decryption software and regain access to their files. There were 2. By the end of the decade, that number would surpass million.
Traditional AV works by comparing the files on your computer with a giant list of known viruses. Every virus on the list is made of computer code and every snippet of code has a unique signature—like a fingerprint. If a snippet of code found on your computer matches that of a known virus in the database, the file is flagged.
While each copy of the virus looked and acted the same, the underlying code was different. This is called polymorphic code, making the first polymorphic virus.
Melissa was a macro virus. Viruses of this type hide within the macro language commonly used in Microsoft Office files. Opening up a viral Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, etc.
Melissa was the fastest spreading virus up to that point, infecting approximately , computers, Medium reported. Viruses paved the way for a whole new generation of destructive malware. Cryptojackers stealthily used our computers to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Ransomware held our computers hostage.
Banking Trojans, like Emotet , stole our financial information. Spyware and keyloggers shoulder surfed us from across the web, stealing our usernames and passwords. Old-school viruses were, for the most part, a thing of the past.
Shamoon targeted computers and network systems belonging to Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, in response to Saudi government policy decisions in the Middle East. In a perfect example of what comes around goes around, cybersecurity researchers have suggested the attack started with an infected USB storage drive—the modern equivalent of the floppy disks used to carry the very first virus, Elk Cloner.
The victim is served up a bogus pop-up ad after landing on a spoofed website or as a result of an adware infection. The entire operation was sophisticated, involving people from around the world to act as money mules to smuggle and transfer cash to the ringleaders in Eastern Europe. In late , the creator of Zeus announced his retirement but many experts believe this to be false.
Also known as Downup or Downadup , Conficker is a worm of unknown authorship for Windows that made its first appearance in The name comes form the English word, configure and a German pejorative. It infects computers using flaws in the OS to create a botnet. The malware was able to infect more than 9 millions computers all around the world, affecting governments, businesses and individuals.
The worm works by exploiting a network service vulnerability that was present and unpatched in Windows. Once infected, the worm will then reset account lockout policies, block access to Windows update and antivirus sites, turn off certain services and lock out user accounts among many. Then, it proceeds to install software that will turn the computer into a botnet slave and scareware to scam money off the user. Microsoft later provided a fix and patch with many antivirus vendors providing updates to their definitions.
Believed to have been created by the Israeli Defence Force together with the American Government, Stuxnet is an example of a virus created for the purpose of cyberwarfare , as it was intended to disrupt the nuclear efforts of the Iranians. The computer worm was designed to attack industrial Programmable Logic Controllers PLC , which allows for automation of processes in machinery.
It specifically aimed at those created by Siemens and was spread through infected USB drives. It altered the speed of the machinery, causing it to tear apart.
Siemens eventually found a way to remove the malware from their software. It was named by McAfee employee Craig Schmugar, one of the people who had originally discovered it. The worm spreads itself by appearing as an email transmission error and contains an attachment of itself. The payload itself is twofold: first it opens up a backdoor to allow remote access and second it launches a denial of service attack on the controversial SCO Group.
It was believed that the worm was created to disrupt SCO due to conflict over ownership of some Linux code. CryptoLocker is a form of Trojan horse ransomware targeted at computers running Windows. It uses several methods to spread itself , such as email, and once a computer is infected, it will proceed to encrypt certain files on the hard drive and any mounted storage connected to it with RSA public key cryptography.
While it is easy enough to remove the malware from the computer, the files will still remain encrypted. The only way to unlock the files is to pay a ransom by a deadline. If the deadline is not met, the ransom will increase significantly or the decryption keys deleted. The ransom operation was eventually stopped when law enforcement agencies and security companies managed to take control part of the botnet operating CryptoLocker and Zeus.
Terence Blacker Stupidity is contagious — just watch the television news headlines. New Articles. Apple falls victim to hackers. The News Matrix: Friday 7 December Guatemala arrests software guru John McAfee. Fugitive software tycoon John McAfee claims he has made it across. Fugitive software tycoon John McAfee seeks asylum in Guatemala.
IV Drip. Thank you for registering Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in. Forgotten your password? Want an ad-free experience?
0コメント