Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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."
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).
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
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.)
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)
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!