When it comes to cybersecurity, few terms are more recognized than "computer viruses." Despite the prevalence of these threats and their widespread consequences, many users are unaware of the nature of the virus. Below is a brief history of PC viruses and a long-term view of this widespread cyber threat.
Self-replicating
automaton theory:
What is a computer virus? This concept was first
discussed in a series of lectures by mathematician John von Neumann in the late 1940s and in the 1966 treatise "Theory of Self-Replicating Automata".
The paper speculates that, like biological viruses, "mechanical"
organisms (such as a bit of computer code) can damage a machine and copy itself
to infect new hosts. It was an idea experiment.
Creeper
program
As Discovery pointed out, the creeper program was often
considered a primary virus and was created by BBN's Bob Thomas in 1971. Creeper
was actually designed as a security test to see if a self-replicating program
is possible. It was a kind of thing. Every time a new disk drive gets infected,
Creeper tries to remove itself from the old host. The creeper wasn't malicious
and I just got the simple message "I'm a creeper. Please catch it if you
can."
Rabbit virus
According to InfoCarnivore, the Rabbit (or Wabbit) virus
was developed in 1974, malicious and ready to replicate. When on the computer,
it made multiple copies of itself, significantly reducing system performance
and eventually crashing the machine. The speed of replication gave the virus
its name.
First Trojan
A major Trojan called ANIMAL (although there is debate as
to whether this is a Trojan horse or just another virus) was developed by a programmer
Walker in 1975, in line with Fourmilab. At that time, the "animal
program" that guessed which animal the user was thinking in the game of 20
questions were very popular. The version created by Walker was in high demand,
and sending it to a friend meant making and sending magnetic tape.
To make things easier, Walker created PERVADE. It was
installed with ANIMAL. While playing sports, PREVADE looked at all the computer
directories available to the user and made a replica of ANIMAL in a directory
where it did not yet exist. There was no malice here, but ANIMAL and PREVADE
fit the definition of Trojan horses. Hiding inside ANIMAL was another program
that manages actions without user approval.
Brain boot
sector virus
Brain, the leading PC virus, began infecting 5.2-inch
floppy disks in 1986. As Securelist reports, it was the work of two brothers,
Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who ran the store in Pakistan. Not interested in
customers making illegal copies of the software, they developed Brain, which
replaced the boot sector of disks with a fad. The virus, which is also the
leading stealth virus, contained hidden copyright messages, but in reality, the
data was not corrupted.
Love Letter
virus
The introduction of reliable, high-speed broadband
networks in the early 21st century has changed the way malware is transmitted.
Not limited to floppy disks or corporate networks, malware is ready to spread
directly on email, popular websites, or the web. As a result, modern malware
has begun to need form. The threat situation has become a mixed environment
shared by viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Therefore, the name
"malware" was given as a general term for malicious software. One of
the most serious epidemics of this new era was the Love Letter, which appeared
on May 4, 2000.
As Securelist points out, it followed the pattern of
early email viruses of the time, but unlike macro viruses, which have dominated
the threat situation since 1995, it does not take the form of infected Word
documents. , Arrived as a VBS file. It worked because it was simple and easy,
and users didn't learn to suspect junk mail. The topic line was "I Love
You" and all emails contained an attachment
"LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU-TXT.vbs". The creator of ILOVEYOU, Onenel de
Guzman designed the worm to overwrite an existing file with a copy of itself.
The worm did not spread to all or some of the victim's email contacts. Since
the message often reaches new victims from familiar people, they are likely to
open it, and I LOVE YOU has become a proof of concept for the effectiveness of
social engineering.
Code red virus
Code earthworms were "lifeless" worms. It only
exists in memory and there was no plan to infect files on the system. Taking
advantage of a flaw in the Microsoft Internet Information Server, the fast
replication worm has caused havoc by manipulating protocols that allow
computers to speak and spread globally in just a few hours. Ultimately, as
pointed out in Scientific American, the compromised machine did not launch a
distributed denial-of-service attack on the Whitehouse.gov website.
Heartbleed
One of the most recent major viruses were called in
2014, and Heartbleed rushed into the field, endangering servers across the web.
Heartbleed, unlike viruses and worms, is due to a vulnerability in OpenSSL, a
general-purpose open-source encryption library used by companies around the
world. OpenSSL sends a "heartbeat" regularly to ensure that
the secure endpoint is still connected. The user can send the selected amount
of knowledge to OpenSSL and then invite an equivalent amount (for example, 1
byte). If the user claims to be sending the maximum 64 kilobytes allowed, but
only 1 byte, the server will respond with knowledge of the last 64 kilobytes
stored in RAM, security technology. Bruce Schneier said. A password to protect
the encryption key.
The future of
computer viruses
For quite some 60 years, computer viruses have been part
of collective human consciousness, but what used to be just cybercrime soon
turned into cybercrime. Worms, Trojans, and viruses are evolving. Hackers are
motivated and smart, constantly pushing the boundaries between connections and
code to plan new infection methods. Prolonged cybercrime seems to include more
point-of-sale (PoS) hacks, and perhaps modern Moker remote access Trojans could
set an example of what is returned. There is. This newly discovered malware is
difficult to detect, difficult to remove and circumvents all known defences.
There is nothing for sure. The change is that it is the lifeline of both attack
and defence.
Good antivirus software can help you protect your system and hence data.
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