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20 Years of Virii
DenOfEarth writes "News.com has an article outlining that it was around twenty years ago that a computer security reasearcher coined the term 'virus', and how the things have been running amok. Interestingly enough, when said researcher applyed for research funding to look into a blanket solution to this possible 'virus' problem, he was turned down."
Virii is not a word.
Drive safely.
From dictonary.com:
Q. What is the plural of virus?
A. Viruses.
It is not viri, or (which is worse) virii. True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, man, the root the English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus.
If you would like to pursue the subject further, see the excellent article What's the Plural of `Virus'? at Perl.com. If you have some knowledge of linguistics and Latin, you might be interested in the morphological analysis of the word from the Perseus Project.
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.
Viruses were much cooler in the early nineties. They didn't spread as wildfire on the internet, but at least they did cool thing as code morphing to foil antivirus programs.
And why is this guy surprised that he doesn't get a grant for a "blanket solution" for viruses? I've got a blanket solution for world hunger and cancer, but I'm not getting any reasearch funding either.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
is spreading like a... yeah.
Users on a multi-user computer system behave like viruses, utilising the hosts resources, sometimes even going wild and destroying the host itself.
Get your own free personal location tracker
While reading the live memory, I found a message stating "Tequilla and Beer forever" along with an address in Switserland if I recall correctly. Ah, those where the days.... Where viruses were no lame email worms but appended themselves to executables.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
When he asked for funding from the National Science Foundation three years later to further explore countermeasures, the agency rebuffed him.
A typical problem with getting research funded (or published) is that the gatekeepers, the people who decide what gets funded/published, often choose what is worthy based on their own research interests. One generally has to have established a track record to become a gatekeeper, which means that new ideas are often shut out, while researchers pursue what they think are the current "fashions."
James Gleick (author of Chaos) tells how he was warned by professors that he'd ruin his career wasting his time with this "chaos" nonsense. (Fortunately, he ignored them.)
Read How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time. It shows how someone with real knowledge of computer science and sufficient determination could create a virus far more destructive than anything seen to date.
Perhaps the reason it has not happened yet is that those with the necessary skill and knowledge would rather spend the effort on something more fulfilling and/or profitable instead of annoying others while risking legal consequences.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
There is no way there is a double in the plural of virus, even in latin the plural nominative would probably either be viri, or viruses. In english though it is definitely viruses see what the dictionary has to say
Remote exploits on unpatched machines go back quite a while too, at least to 1988 (the Morris worm).
As long as there are security holes in programs that interface with the network (such as sendmail), people will try to use them for malicious (or at least non-beneficial) purposes.
Here's the company which created the first computer virus for the PC architecture. Interesting story on this page.
Banu
In English, AFAIK, the plural of a word ending with 's' is 'ses'. Hence virus -> viruses.
'virii' does bear some resemblance to _Latin_ plurals. For example, the plural of 'radius' is 'radii' which is a Latin plural, but used in English as well. Note that here 'us' changes into 'i', which is why you might argue that virus -> viri (single 'i' at the end).
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"Do you remember the VIRUS program?" ....etc. etc.
"Vaguely. Wasn't it some kind of computer disease or malfunction?"
"Disease is closer. There was a science-fiction writer once who wrote a story about it--but the thing had been around a long time before that.
(p. 175, in the 1975 Ballantine paperback reprint: I think I have the 1972 serialization in Galaxy somewhere in a box upstairs, but I can't be arsed to dig it out)
Actually, as described in the succeeding pages, VIRUS was more of a worm (a term coined by John Brunner in "The Shockwave Rider", but you knew that already); but the idea of malware called a virus was around in the early 70s at least.
Any time you read an article and see Fred Cohen's name, you can stop reading right there, because you know another so called "journalist" has fallen hook, line, and sinker for this guy's self-aggrandizing line of bullshit. Note that you'll never find an article quoting X as saying Fred Cohen is the father of computer viruses, unless X is Fred Cohen. He's shilling for his security consulting firm, plain and simple. He no more "invented" the computer virus than Al Gore invented the Internet. Please, Slashdot, stop feeding this buttplug's enormous ego!
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
> So, what is the nominative plural of virus? I agree it's not virii, but we do need and answer so that the editors and others know what to do. I believe 'viruses' is OK in English, but what is the Latin plural?
There isn't any recorded Latin plural for it. It is thought to be a non-count noun like "furniture". (FWIW, we also only have a couple of recorded uses other than in the nom. or acc.)
It can be translated as "pestilence", which usually isn't pluralized in English either (though you can set up awkward usages that would be pluralized).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Alright, alright...enough people have commented on my misspelling of the plural form of virus, rightly so, as their dictionaries tell them 'virii' is not a word. Also, I did misspell the word 'applied' as 'applyed'. I used to get A's in spelling when I was younger, but maybe I'm getting rusty, sorry for that. Maybe I shouldn't smoke dope before posting stories...
My question is whether it really matters or not. I don't think the blurb of text is incomprehensible, and since it's not a legal brief or anything like that, there is no binding meaning to the words. I've looked at the comments, and some people have also used the word 'virii', probably without thinking it was wrong. Is there anybody out there who read '20 years of virii' and didn't know what that meant? I'm really interested, as I would be willing to bet that most people who read that statement would be thinking within seconds that the story concerned a plural form of the virus being around for 20 years, or something very similar (unless they were a native latin speaker, in which case they might have been a bit fucked up).
I'm not trying to slam on the nitpickers or anything, but really, what is communication? Is it being able to form coherent thoughts in another human being's brain, or is it following a bunch of rules that need to be updated every once in a while to keep up with our own language mutation that takes place daily?
hehe...I've never been put on a soapbox before because I made spelling mistakes, so to those who really take offense to my spelling, I'm sorry that you weren't able to understand the words I wrote, and to those that 'got it', I hope you thought the story was interesting.
If only cohen had've patented the computer Virus'
I was having a red wine fuelled conversation with some friends on the subject of viruses, worms and Internet security the other day. We were discussing how connectivity has changed the landscape with regards to the impact of viruses, bugs and worms. In the eighties and early nineties there was less connectivity than we have with the modern Internet. The obvious analogue to human viral pathogens and the rise of jet aircraft travel between countries shows how this will only get worse as more devices are connected to Internet and how inoculation and prevention together with secure coding practices (something which has no human virus equivalent at the moment, but who knows where DNS techniques will take us) are becoming mandatory. Should all devices connecting to the network be licensed and approved as cars travelling on roads today must be?
The most interesting point raised was when (if?) we reach the point where viruses are classifiable as sentient beings. Do we then have the right to arbitrarily exterminate them? I could in my stupidest dreams foresee a court case where the latest Internet Explorer 99 bug is arguing for it's continued existence, social welfare and the right to bear children.
Also, watch my blog for the upcoming article, "20 years of people finally getting to use something from their high-school Latin class."
Look, it is really, really simple:
;-)
It doesn't matter if it's latin. It doesn't matter if it's correct latin. It doesn't matter that the plural is viruses in english or not.
When are you guys going to realise that english (and any other language) is stuffed with words from other languages, wrongly used words, words that never existed, words that were wrong at the time but became commonplace, words that are currently written the way they are because they used to be too lazy to write them properly, etc.
A lot of words you (now) think is correct english, (and where you are keen to point the dictionary to), were dead wrong 100 years, or maybe even only a decade ago. Now, that's a fact, and I don't think even the contra-virii will deny this.
Thus, whether something is considered a word or not, is SOLELY depending on the use of it. If people use it, it becomes a word, point. The origins and the wrong or rights of it don't enter the picture anymore, just as it doesn't with the words you use everyday now, but were once seen as equally wrong as you now claim 'virii' is.
Now, people claiming it's necessary to 'nip it in the butt' are severly lacking the understanding of how a living language works. First of all, nipping everything in the but that doesn't is in the dictionary already is a sure way to become a dead language. And secondly, it's not possible to nip a word in anything by discussing and writing about it.
And thirdly, while the use may not be whidespread yet, it is becomming more and more so (and, as indicated, it can't be stopped just by saying you don't like it). Do a search on google: there is a lot talk about virii already. Maybe, what now is still the use of a subgroup, will become common language for a certain meaning of the word, namely the plural for computerviruses (as in contrast with biological ones). Now, I can't see why that would be thus wrong. A word in first instance defined by the kind of use it is made, and in turn this has to do with (and if) people understand the meaning of the word.
Now, nobody can deny that, in this respect, virii scores very well; even those that opose it so vehemently know EXACTLY what it stands for and what it means (or portrays to mean). So, the general recognition of the meaning of the word is already there, the rapid adoption of the word is already there...it's just going the same way as all those other 'wrong' words that are common usuage today.
So, pls, get a grip. Not liking the word has nothing to do with the viability of it becoming a 'real' word.(Certainly not when using the word while demonstrating that it shouldn't be used
And no, my native language ain't english, so spare me the bad jokes of the quality of my english words.(Which will probably be much higher then the quality of your french anyway, with the odd exeption, no doubt)
Sadly, as spammers become interested in exploited open relays for their "business", writing viruses is slowly but surely becoming lucrative. And we're not talking about some random 13 year olds with a 1997 OE exploit, here, either. While most professionals would never write a virus for fun, money is always a very good, very valid and very strong argument.
Such is life. Get Grisoft AVG while you can, free and good virus scanner. Norton sans bloat and anual subscriptions.
Hate me!
In theory, a capability system can be used to prevent many types of viruses; however, they are still vulnerable to at least two kinds of attacks.
First, if a program is capable of causing damage with rights it legitimately possesses, the capability system will be unable to prevent it from doing whatever it chooses. This would typically require some sort of manual intervention (exploiting a backdoor, rooting the system, spoofing a distribution site) to compromise a trusted component, but there are many programs which run with enough rights to spread themselves. For instance, if the file system manager is a trojan, it can copy itself or delete a user's files without overstepping the security mechanism.
Second, capability systems are just as susceptible to social engineering as any other security device: if a user naively grants the "cool new game" he just received in an email full rights to his system, the rest of the security policy is pretty much useless. The danger lessens if only administrators can grant rights to programs, but in general no security mechanism can protect a system if it is not used as it was intended
There is one solution to the 'virus' problem that everyone in the networking and security field knows about, but which few professionals endorse due to conflicts with business and commerce.
The solution to 'viruses' is diversity in systems. This stems from the biological viewpoint which makes us realize that while one type of system may be vulnerable to a specific flaw, a mix of different systems (each with their own properties) will offer greater resilience.
Think of the Internet, and how much trouble has been caused by Microsoft Windows viruses. Because of the Microsoft monoculture, the Internet has come to the brink of disaster several times (worm outbreaks; flooding of DNS root servers; and most notably, spam and increasingly fragmented global communications as a result).
Speaking of virus it has always been somewhat mysterious. I remember when I compiled my first dos virus in assembling it was such a painful task. From the initial assumption to the final accomplishment it took me more than 3 months, but what I had compiled was still at mess. Recently I come up with the idea that virus ultimately is something that affects other files and spreads itself, so it would not be too complicated to compile a virus by shell. Then I conveniently compiled the following script. Its functionality is to affect other shell programs.
This program is of little practical significance, but it is helpful to visually understand the virus spread mechanism. Therefore, its instructive significance is more important than the practical one.
Read the rest here.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
By 1982, there were mutant versions of Apple ][ DOS that were called viruses.
By 1986, the DoD was soliciting RFPs through the SBIR program for people to write viruses.
Cohen and News.com are completely and totally **WRONG** about the coinage of the term. An academic and a news outlet: nobody should be surpised they're full of sh!t.
Allow me to tell the impatient what amazingly INSIGHTFUL comments are coming up:
;-) )
* 39 people reminding you that viruses is the corrent plural, not virii (of which 9 point to dictionary.com)
* 13 people stating that no, virii is correct
* 9 people questioning the manhood, charachter and evolutionary level of the people who defened virii.
* 14 posts about the "good old days"
* 6 comments on how someone should have patented viruses
* 14 informational posts so far
* and only one good joke (hint, you're reading it
(BTW: I'm too lazy to actaully count posts, all of the above numbers are 100% statistical, that is to say, 100% fiction.)
I believe you meant to say "nip it in the bud", which is a saying that has its roots in gardening.
..wayne..
If you are desireness of wordywise playfulings, begart a topics for thems. Nonebody willed complainted thens. If yous postwill factuish artics, use properized English, lestward we thinkage you a cuckwitted moronid semi-literaged drok.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I was told to hand it off to our sysadmin group, and gave it to someone I'd never met before, named David Smith. The day later when I got it back, I was driving home when I heard that someone in NJ named David Smith had been arrested for releasing the worm. While I laughed about the coincidence, and assumed it was someone else since his town in NJ was many miles from my employer, sure enough a few hours later I got mail at work saying a contractor there had been accused of it.
The epilogue is that in the last day he was working there, he worked on at least two computers: mine and that of the head of the lab. And while I was a bit nervous, I'm pretty sure he just did a fine job, and didn't leave any surprises in the systems he was tinkering with at the time.
Robert T. Morris (of the 1988 worm fame) is now a professor at MIT. I wonder what Mr. Smith will be doing a few years from now? (And please avoid the one-liner.... "time" :)
No, it's not. Example, I can't make "dogii" the plural of "dog", nor can I make "fucking halfwitted moronii" the plural of "Moderation abuser" (though god help us if there really were two of you)
I've seen a couple people saying "what happened to the playfulness of words in hacker culture", sometimes with references to words like "boxen".
I don't mind "boxen". I usually do mind "virii". The difference is intent. No one *really* thinks that the plural of "box" is "boxen", it's just used for fun. However, too many people sadly think "virii" is the real plural of "virus".
Word playfulness is fine. Ignorance is annoying.
(The same thing applys [ha! It's a joke, son.] to spelling errors. An obvious typo, like, say, "applyed", is fine. When people really think that the contraction of "you are" is "your", then it's annoying.)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
It is more accurate to say that ENGLISH has evolved for just that reason, as (at least) French and Hebrew have government institutions perserving the status of the language. You might recall a recent story about l'Acadime Francais coming up with a word for "e-mail"... The French language doesn't evolve because it is basically illegal to teach the language in a way that isn't endorsed by the Academy.
Buttsex.
We make new words out of old ones all the time;
we verb anything;
we create words like "tintinabulation" just because of how they sound, or add words just to have another one that means the same thing;
we create euphemisms for euphemisms;
there is even a word or two with roots that come from two different languages;
we have only a few words to describe the qualities of sounds (mostly only distinguishing good sounds from bad ones), and between the qualities of smells (mostly only distinguishing good smells from bad ones);
we can make gramatically correct sentences that are difficult to parse - in fact, it has been proven that we can make such sentences that are impossible to parse.
All these things are, of course, ridiculous.
Why not add one more thing to the list of ridiculii?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
For many people in the UNIX community, the Morris worm was the great wakeup call that the 'net was no longer a safe space where you could trust all the other sysadmins (( as was especially the case when your 'net was really only a LAN )).
As a result of the Morris worm, people started to lock down their systems and software, including simple things like using fgets(3) instead of gets(3).
(This lesson was also available to Microsoft, but they chose to ignore it until very recently.)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Because, of course, French existed before humans did, and was handed to us by God who deemed it necessary that we form a nation called France so l'Academie francaise could be formed to preserve it. It would be absurd to suggest that French every evolved from Latin by the compounding of errors and changes to the language. Pure nonsense.