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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".
Their mother and I have put up with enough!
We'd like to thank the Academy, the little people and most of all Microsoft for making all this possible. Here's to another 20 good years.
[applause]
Trolling is a art,
support@microsoft.comp ort@microsoft.com
support@microsoft.com
sup
They let it happen; now, they're sending it to your doorstep.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
opening up and unsecuring all the ports on my machine!
Whats scary is that this article is right next after one that says Microsoft Moving Into Chip Design. Is this an omen of some sorts?
Disturbing. Very disturbing.
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!)
Anyone old enough to know what I'm talking about?
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.
"Something wonderful has happened...Your Amiga is alive!"
;)
Good ol' days....
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
Hmm, I just thought of something when looking at the top 2 stories... Why aren't there any XBox viruses? It seems like a prime target for worms, with internet connectivity via XBox Live, a well-published interface for firmware hacking via software, a homogenous monoculture of both hardware and software, not to mention probably dozens of well-known vulnerabilities from its use of Windows and DirectX alone. Is there anything special about the XBox that is protecting it more than PCs from a plague of viruses?
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
"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.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Well despite the fact that they are quite malicious, some of those viruses are pretty clever.
Think about it. This really is something to celebrate.
Next year the viruses can legally drink.
A drunken virus should be much easier to thwack.
This equates to artificially intelligent versions of viruses, complete with very sophisticated capabilities. A script kiddies delight. Of course, properly written, it could be dangerous to play with, taking out a few script kiddy systems in the process.
(imagine demonic voices coming out of a system - "Who dares summon me?")
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Now the point of my story - My friend looked into exactly what Norton was checking for, and it turns out that almost half of the viruses it was checking for were actually Microsoft Word macros. Now, I don't know that much about Word macros, but I'm assuming that most of the ones that would mess up a Windows box are different from those that would mess up an OS X box. So before anyone says that virus only show up for windows because it is the most popular, also realize that Micro$oft can't even write a secure word processor.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Nowadays, with the advent of MacOSX (chugging along, thanks) and Linux, these little critters are a thing of the past....
Oh! You mean that they aren't exctinct like the ill-fated dinosaucers!?!? Geez! You mean they only run on MS Windows! You kidding? And to help them procreate and run rampant like in the ancient days, uncle Bill leaves the ports open??? Good 'ncle Bill!
PS: before the hordes of trolls and uninformed bots advocating the alleged security-via-obscurity of MacOSX come in by the legion, please do a google and a slashdot search (yes it even was published here) on PowerPC shell-codes, thank you. After having read and thouroughly understood the ample PDF's, come back and dare to post.
SPOILER: the CS library next to you surely has a publicily available wrinkled PowerPC assembly and arch book for you, go read them.
Does this strike anyone else how ironic that the first program to be infected with a virus was called 'VD' ?
....move along....nothing to see here....
I work in a design office where most people use Mac OS 10.2. I swear to God, now matter how many times I show people virus stats, or point them to articles about Macs and viruses, the SECOND there is something wonky going on, they call scream that they have a virus.
> there are almost 60,000 viruses in existence
So at this rate, how long until the virus definition files for your AV software are so big and so frequent that you need broadband just to stay updated enough to maintain a reasonable level of protection?
How long until it takes gigs of storage space to store them all?
Wonder if Symantec, McAfee, etc., will offer a remote storage service in the future? Does everybody really need to store the same list of virus definitions on C: ?
Are virus definitions the future of AV or will heuristics and other "AI" get good enough in the foreseeable future that the one-off approach of definitions will become obsolete?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
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
Sorry, but Fred Cohen was not the first virus writer.
These viruses can already drink, and they can probably vote on a Diebold machine. They may already have...
John
I think the whole thing was a sideways jab at hackers:
While virus writers are usually socially adept, many hackers are not.
That's the only line that really stuck out to me in this story... If you read on, however, it looks like they're talking about crackers of sorts. Any idea on who they're trying to insult here?
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
Don't know about viruses, but the first computer worms (as in programs that dynamically spread themselves across networks) were created at Xerox PARC in 1978. See here (scroll down to "1978") or here for details.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Yeah, it was horrible. In college my dumbass roommates got the anti-cmos A virus on my 486, didn't even bother to tell me Win3.1 was acting weird. Lost everything on my 40 meg hard drive. Ever since, I update virus definitions religiously.
Unfortunately I cannot find a web resource for it, but the original article appeared in Computers and Security. The article includes source code in a cross between pseudo-code and a shell command language.
The original article is:
Computer Viruses Theory and Experiments
Fred Cohen
Computers and Security no. 6 (1987)
Pages 22-35
Elsevier Science Publishers, BV (North-Holland)
This article was followed by a plethora of misguided "containment" articles also in Computers & Security. Cohen proved them wrong again in:
Computational Aspects of Computer Viruses
Fred Cohen
Computers & Security no. 8 (1989)
Pages 325-344
Elsevier Science Publishers, Ltd.
As an aside, I read that Mr. Cohen had to wait several years before being able to publish his papers because not a single publication in the US would print his articles. The first article is very entertaining and instructional.
Cohen's first computer virus pseudo-code:(If I have time to scan them, I'll post a link to page scans of these articles; right now I have too much work.)
Cheers,
Eugenehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Since many viruses are written outside the US, it's quite likely that they "can legally drink" already.
>The emergence of Brain kicked off lots of other viruses such as Lehigh, Jerusalem, Cascade and Miami.
I was a student consultant at the Lehigh University computer center (Bethlehem PA, USA) in 1986 when the "Lehigh" virus surfaced. We called it PC-AIDS and told people to wear their "floppy condoms" (write protect tape). A few consultants (Loren Keim et al) wrote the antivirus program for it.
As far as I know, this was the first virus to get national attention. A letter from our center's director was printed verbatim in a PC Magazine column, and that got picked up by other media.
It was interesting to see how people first reacted to the idea of a computer virus. Our references to AIDS and condoms certainly didn't help. It freaked people out (remember, this was 1986).
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,
viruses are actually pretty awseome considering what some of them do, the ingeniousness behind them is prolly why they called them "marvelous"
it also keeps competent software makers on their toes to make a more secure and virus free system, most virii dwell on security holes and architecture plagues. (eg, everything windows has to offer)
there's one virus that wins them all, it's that one that has polymorphic code, meaning it can execute on any system on a specific architecture..
a virus like that could be handy because it could help bridge the gap between most operating systems in compatibility..
sometimes with the bad you get the good..
example, when the soviets launched sputnik, this was a "bad" thing for americans, 2 reasons, nuclear weapons being launched from space, and ego.
so, in light of that, (D)ARPA was formed, then came the arpanet, which led to the internet.
so good does come out of seemingly bad events.
virus writing can be considered an art in some cases, considering... especially if someone found out how to make one that could attack any linux system no matter what. now that would be scary, but would show skill.