The spread of the computer virus

Viruses likeMydoom ,CodeRed and llove you have been bringing PCs to a standstill ,slowing down the internet and causing crores of rupees worth of damage for more than 20 years now


When Fred Cohen ,a student at the University of Sothern California,wrote a thesis on the possibility that computers would not be defended from malicious programs,nobody guessed that he was layingground for a $3.8 billion industry.In 1984,Cohen published a paper titled "Computer viruses : Theories and Experiments" that not every professor would allow his student to go through today. The paper described thestructure of a theoretical program which could multiply and carry out commands without the user's knowledge: the conceptualization of first virus.

everything was going fine in the mid-eighties; and if a ever disappeared it was most likely due to aprogramme error or simple carelessnes on the part of the user.But only a couple a year latter, a new type of virus start emerging
- the so-called polymorphic type of virus could change itself and encrypt the malicious payload .Many firms in the still-nascent antivirus industry couldn't deal with the next advancement , and threw in their towels .The few that remained had to clean up the fallout of virus construction kits ,which started becoming quite popular and allowed every PC novice to program malware and cause the billions of dollars of worth damages...

Viruses for everyone: infection through the web

In the pre-Internt era it wasn,t easy for virus swriters to circulate their creations their creations ,since floppy disks were the only the widespread means of transmission.The golden age for crooks dawned with the emergence of the Internet . now they can send their to all over world from their own homes-all that was needed a web connection..The internet also introduced antivirus manufactures to a new problem -until then ,experts had studied every virus individually and come up with individual tools to deal with them.Three hundred viruses per day were not too much of a burden but the number quickly rose to 30,000 per day.

As a result , the antivirus vendors had to built large computers centres and write tools that automatically analyze virus samples to determine their signatures.Today,such analysis takes a cople of seconds -only in difficult cases do the experts personally examine any data.In recent times,it is not just PCs but also cellphones that have been affected by viruses attacks .Thankfully,only a limited number of threats have surfaced so far, but that could change in the near future with the advent of synchronization services such as Microsoft Live Mesh and Apple MobileMe ,which consatntly updates data between cell phones and computers. These serve as perfect distribution method for viruses- there is no real protection against such attacks yet.Even Fred Cohen concluded in his computer can only be perfectly safe when it is completely isolated from contact with other computers .that is it can't be networked or allow any foreign storage medium to be connected .Today this is not practically possible .There is nothing we can do but be careful and trust the antivirus industry,which in turn has to continuously react to new types of threats and provide users with tools to keep us on top of the daily cat-and-mouse game we face............

1949

Virus theory

In one of his works ,John Von Neumann puts forth the theory that a computer program can replicate itself on its own.

1982

Independent tools

15 year old student Rich Skrenta writes a program called Elk Cloner that spread itselfs in the system through disks.It uses the boot sector to propagate itself.

1984

First virus

Fred Cohen introduces the first functioning virus in his thesis, which is written for the unix systems.

1986

Pakistan Connection

Softwares retailers from the middle east spreadthe first dos virus .The progrmas renames disks but doesn't causes any great damage..

1987

1. Jerusalem

This is the first virus that causes permanent damage it deletes all COM and EXE files fromthe disk on wvery friday till 13th.

2.Resisting detection

The cascade virus coceals itself in the infected system's RAM

1988

Virus constructions kits

a virus constructions kit appears for the popular atari st computers with which even beginners can write malware that resists detection- all without any program language.

1989-1972

1.Antivirus tools

Program designed to fight viruses make their first appeareances..

2.Virus win a round

Malware writers start creating polymorphic viruses which are more difficult to detect on ainfected pcs.Many antivirys manufacturers

give up since they are unable to find a solution to this problem.

3. Michelangelo

The first virus that captures the attention of a media .It lise dormanton infected machines till march 6,the artists birthday ,when it overwrites the boot sector..

1995

Macro viruses.

The first malware for world and other such programs ,make their appeareances .Due to frequent document exchanges ,the virus circulates more than those which attack the operating system.

2000

I love you

The worm "lloveyou" spreads via mail and causes damage worth billions with in days,by deelting files from affected pcs

2002

Independentof the os

New generations of viruses can also infect files on linux machines, apart from windows appliacations

2004

1.Sasser

A german student programs a virus that shuts down PCs , causing huge bussiness losses and disruptions .

2. cell phones

The first virus for cellphones came . A year later later they make appeareance on Symbian devices .however they have not spread much.

2006

Radio worm

A research group from holland introduces a new wormthat can spread itself through rfid radio transmissions.

2009------------------>

"FUTURE"

Viruses everywhere

communications medium such as mobile and PCs are always connected to each other throgh networks.MAlware will attack these systems and simultaneously delete or exploit available data.

This is not much about viruses but i have to end my discussions here.