History of Viruses 1

7/31/2019 History of Viruses 1

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The History and Details of

Computer Viruses

With Abid Omar

http://[email protected]


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Terms

What is a virus

What is a wormWhat is a Trojan horse


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Terms

What is a virus

What is a wormWhat is a Trojan horse


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1981 Apple Viruses 1, 2, & 3

1980s Fred Cohen

1987 Lehigh Virus

1988 The first anti virus software

1990 The first polymorphic viruses

1991 Symantec releases Norton Anti Virus1992 The Michelangelo Virus

1994 Kaos4 virus spreads via adult websites.

1996 The Concept virus

The History of Computer Viruses


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The History of Computer Viruses II

1999 The Melissa Virus

2000 The I Love You Virus

2001 The Code Red Worm

2003 The Slammer Worm.

2004 MyDoom


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The History of Computer Viruses -

Details

1981 Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the

first viruses "in the wild" or public domain.

Found on the Apple II operating system, the

viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated

computer games.


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Details

1980s In the early 1980s, Fred Cohen did

extensive theoretical research, as well as setting

up and performing numerous practical

experiments, regarding viral type programs. His

dissertation was presented in 1986 as part of the

requirements for a doctorate in electrical

engineering from the University of Southern

California. This work is foundational, and any

serious student of viral programs disregards it athis own risk Dr. Cohen's definition of a

computer virus as "a program that can 'infect'

other programs by modifying them to include a

version of itself


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Details

1987 In November, theLehigh virus was

discovered at Lehigh University in the U.S. It

was the first "memory resident file infector". A

file-infecting virus attacks executable files. It

gets control when the file is opened. The Lehigh

virus attacked a file called COMMAND.COM.

When the file was run (usually by booting from

an infected disk), the virus stayed in the resident

memory.


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Details

1988 In March, the first anti-virus software was

written. It was designed to detect and remove the

Brain virus and immunized disks against Brain

infection.


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Details

1990 Viruses combining various characteristics

spring up. They included Polymorphism

(involves encrypted viruses where the decryption

routine code is variable), Armoring(used to

prevent anti-virus researchers from dissembling

a virus) andMultipartite (can infect both

programs and boot sectors).


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Details

1991 Symantec releases Norton Anti-Virus

software.

1992 Media mayhem greeted the virus

Michaelangelo in March. Predictions of massive

disruptions were made and anti-virus software

sales soared. As it turned out, the cases of the

virus were far and few between.


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Details

1994 A virus called Kaos4 was posted on a

pornography news group file. It was encoded as

text and downloaded by a number of users.

1996 Concept, a macro-virus, becomes the most

common virus in the world.

1998 - The "RedTeam" virus infects Windows

executables dispatches the infected files throughEudora e-mail.


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Details

2000 The "I Love You Virus" wreaks havoc around the world.

It is transmitted by e-mail and when opened, is automatically

sent to everyone in the user's address book

July 2001: The Code Red worm infects tens of thousands of

systems running Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000

server software, causing an estimated $2 billion in damages.

The worm is programmed to use the power of all infected

machines against the White House Web site at apredetermined date. In an ad hoc partnership with virus

hunters and technology companies, the White House

deciphers the virus's code and blocks traffic as the worm

begins its attack..


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Details

2002: Melissa virus author David L. Smith, 33,

is sentenced to 20 months in federal prison

Jan. 2003: The "Slammer" worm infects

hundreds of thousands of computers in less than

three hours. The fastest-spreading worm ever

wreaks havoc on businesses worldwide,

knocking cash machines offline and delaying

airline flights.


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Details

2004: The "MyDoom" worm becomes the

fastest-spreading e-mail worm as it causes

headaches -- but very little damage -- almost a

year to the day after Slammer ran rampant in late

January 2003. MyDoom uses "social

engineering," or low-tech psychological tricks,

to persuade people to open the e-mail attachment

that contains the virus. It claims to be a

notification that an e-mail message sent earlierhas failed, and prompts the user to open the

attachment to see what the message text

originally said. Many people fall for it.


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Details

2007: A new virus called "Storm Worm." is

released. This fast-spreading email spammer

disguises itself as a news email and asks you to

download film. The "Storm Worm" gathers

infected computers into a botnet, which it uses to

infect other machines. It was first identified on

Jan. 17 and within 13 days had infected 1.7

million computers


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Details

2009 9 million computers running on Windows

operating system were hit with "Conficker"

worm. The malware spread via the Internet and

the main tools that helped the worm spread were

unpatched corporate networks and USB memory

sticks. First discovered last October, it loads

itself on to a computer by exploiting a weakness

in Windows servers. Once it has infected a

machine, the software also tries to connect to upto 250 different domains with random names

every day.


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The mechanics of Viruses

Delivery

a. Via email

b. Copying over a network

c. Direct communication with exposed ports.

Payload

Types of VirusesMacro virus

Script Virus

Executable Virus


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How Anti Virus Software Works

Scanning for known files

Scanning for worm infection vectors

Heuristic scanning


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Current Active Viruses

As of 13 November 2005

Sober.S first noticed October 13, 2005

Bagle variant started September 19, 2005

Zotob-D August 16th, 2005


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Rules for preventing viruses

Keep operating system and all software updated/patched

Use a virus scanner. McAffee and Norton are the two most widely

accepted and used virus scanners. It costs about $30 a year to keep

your virus scanner updated. Do it.

If you are not sure about an attachment, dont open it.

You might even exchange a code word with friends and

colleagues. Tell them that if they wish to send you an attachment,

to put the code word in the title of the message. Without seeing the

code word, you will not open any attachment.

Dont believe security alerts that you are sent. Microsoft does

not send out things in this manner. Go check the Microsoft website

regularly, as well as one of the anti-virus websites previously

mentioned.


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http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/virus-news/

http://www.cert.org/nav/index_red.html

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/

Anti Virus Information Web Sites


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Call:98 95 43 13 1785 4731 13 16

048 32 11 13 16

88 93 72 36 13

Email:[email protected]

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