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20th Anniversary Of Computer Viruses Commemorated
DoraLives writes "Our good friends at the BBC are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the computer virus. So, viruses are no longer teenagers and are now entering adulthood, as 'there are almost 60,000 viruses in existence and they have gone from being a nuisance to a permanent menace.' What wonders shall there be to come, as these marvelous bits of code continue to grow and multiply?" We ran a recent BBC-authored story on the psychology of virus writers.
Maybe I'm just a grumpy old curmudgeon, but I don't see what there is to celebrate here, or what is about these little bits of code that's so "marvelous".
Just you wait, there's more in store. Except it seems now that virus authors have major financial backing (spammers) and are establishing a sophisticated zombie infrastructure running on Windows machines that will cause years of serious trouble. Time to start seriously prosecuting these a$$holes (spammers, virus authors, or Microsoft... you decide!)
Blaming it on Microsoft is foolish. There are exploits in every OS out there. People write for MS because it's what people use.
Twenty one is the legal drinking age lat time I checked. But...
It represents a full generation. e.g. One cadre of people have grown up for their whole lives in contact with both the realities of the thing and the meme.
This might inicate both better virus and better defenses.
It also might just be a slow day for the news.
Put enough people into a system and it starts to behave like an organic system rather than individuals each doing their thing.
Viruses, worms, trojans are way past the point of being expressions of individualistic derangement.
They represent the nasty side of the biology of the Net: the fact that any simulated or real ecosystem produces more parasites than non-parasites, and that non-parasites have to spend a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs.
Two decades is not significant in itself, but it should be a stark warning that viruses are not going to go away, that the Net is turning "wild", and that we need something other than daily antivirus updates to keep our systems safe.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
"there are almost 60,000 viruses in existence"
Why do journalists insist on sticking poorly researched figures in a writeup? Do they think that this somehow makes it all seem more credible? This number is clearly just a count from a virus checker's definition file summary. I bet they failed to include or even comprehend the fact that viruses are not a Windows only thing - heck, game instructions for the Amiga would insist that you hard booted your machine to get rid of potentially evil RAM content type stuff.
Yes, unlike windows it doesnt have any ports open by default.
Joe Script Kiddie can't write code for an X-Box. Yet.
There's also not much to gain since Joe Home User won't be putting anything on the X-Box that JSK would want.
The virus would also have to wedge itself permanently into the system. Otherwise a simple press of the reset button and *poof* cured.
What do you do when your gaming system acts up?
Reset. Console don't get viruses because it's (virtually) impossible by design to make any permanent effects. All Nintendo systems are immune because the system doesn't depend on writable media. Worst that could happen is that your memory card gets fried. But that doesn't affect any of your games or the system itself.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Microsoft is putting out a solid OS, I'm just saying that it's flaws are overexposed but the sheer amount of use it gets. I know that the bugs reported on software I write is directly proportional to the number of people using it. Users will find the most asinine, crackheaded things to do with your software and Microsoft has more asinine crackheads using it than anyone else.
Blaming it on Microsoft is foolish. There are exploits in every OS out there. People write for MS because it's what people use.
I've got a great counter-example for that. Microsoft's IIS web server runs about 20% of all web sites, while Apache runs 70%. By your logic, Apache should be the server everyone attacks.
I've been running a copy of the Apache web server on my home computer for the last three months. During that time, I've logged 22,000 attacks on my server. And every last one of those was attacking it as if it were IIS.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Since many viruses are written outside the US, it's quite likely that they "can legally drink" already.
Is anybody else bothered by this statement? "Almost every year"? I can certainly find hundreds of examples for each year.
I design user interfaces for a free network management application,
apart from the British ones who have been getting smashed legally for a couple of years and illegally for even longer. And in some parts of Britain viruses are grandchildren already
No but, yeah but, no but...