Slashdot Mirror
PC Virus Turns 25
Batblue writes "Happy anniversary Basit and Amjad! Twenty-five years ago this month (CT: Warning, intrusive interstitial ad), the Alvi brothers of Lahore, Pakistan, gave the world the Brain Virus, the first bit of malware capable of infecting a DOS-based PC. Back in those relatively innocent times, the brothers actually embedded their real names and business address in the code and later told Time magazine they had written the virus to protect their medical software from piracy. Who knows what they were really thinking, but by all accounts the Brain Virus was relatively harmless. Twenty-five years later, most malware is anything but benign and cyber criminals pull off exploits the Alvi brothers never envisioned."
Hypercorrections don't reflect upon your intelligence the way I suspect you think they do.
Btw, what better way to celebrate virii than an add-infected site.
1) The term is 'viruses' not 'virii'.
2) The word you are thinking of is 'ads'. Unless you are somehow blocking a website that is infected with "addition" which makes little to no sense.
Really? Attack Toolkits are a new worry? I mean, I know they consulted a guy from Symantec for the article, but even so...
Attack Toolkits have been in existence for a long time, even if you only count the newer "hosted" solutions.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of some of the first PC viruses, Slashdot linked to a site where you can get some of the most up to date malware, adware and other infections!?
How festive!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'd always been told the first viruses appeared on campuses where Mr McAffee promptly turned up offering solutions.
I remember my screen said,
"Something wonderful is happening"
.
.
.
"Your Amiga has come alive"
Unfortunately the DOS was flaky enough as it was. The virus unintentionally ruined disks.
No one believed me at first- the message didn't come up again for a couple more weeks so they thought i was crazy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The solution to this problem has been known for a very long time... it's the principle of least privilege.
We've had 25 years to wise up and stop using a "default permit" based system and still haven't done so.
Here's a summary of the situation, for those who want to help push things in the right direction.
You have about as much chance of getting people to stop using that as you do of getting them to stop saying 'boxen'.
A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.
"Twenty-five years later, most malware is anything but benign and cyber criminals pull off exploits the Alvi brothers never envisioned."
Run your OS from a read-only device, implement strict separation between code and data. Never download-and-run code from arbitrary sites over the Internet ..
or Attention Deficit Dis.... oooh, look, a squirrel!
Seems we have more to worry about than just viruses.
Remember that?
Seems like a millennium now.
I sat and and disinfected stacks of floppies.. one by one.
Back then Antivirus was new and Mcafee was the top dog.
What the heck happened to Mcafee? Ugh.
I convinced the management of my organization to dump Mcafee and switch to VIPRE enterprise. 600+ computers
Mcafee did jack squat when real malware came through. Conficker did a thorough pounding of our network while Maccoffee rolled over and played dead.
This was certainly not the first personal computer virus, as I recall there was a virus running rampant on the Apple II computers in my high school running Apple's DOS 3.3 before this. The virus was one of the things that got them to switch everyone over to using the spiffy new ProDOS instead.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I haven't heard someone use the term "boxen" in years. Are there really still idiots spitting that one out?
Please "make a case" for virii, other than "it vaguely sounds correct to illiterate retards like myself".
I see it at least once a week here on Slashdot.
Decide for yourself what that means. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My boxii take serious offense to that, you insensitive clod. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Or maybe it is an AIDS-infected site. Practice safe surfing!
"But this one goes to 11!"
A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.
Are you a creationist too?
The first time I remember seeing anti-virus software was on a 1988 Mac Plus (system 6). The software was called "Vaccine"...I remember the icon of it loading at boot up time looked like an hypodermic needle. Of course that was before Apple adopted BSD as the basis for OS X. Security has improved significantly since then.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
You have about as much chance of getting people to stop using that as you do of getting them to stop saying 'boxen'.
A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.
Meh.
I could care less.
if the webpage has such an "intrusive interstitial ad" that you felt you had to protect the public with your warning, perhaps it would've been better to NOT LINK TO THE SHITTY FUCKING WEBSITE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Boot Sector viruses go back a lot further then 25 years. Anyone remember SCORES? I have a old Bernoulli drive at home formated in HFS that contains examples of some 20 Classic Mac OS 6.07 viruses. Before that there were a very few active mainframe based virus programs. We ran into one in the late 70s on a still functional IBM OS/360. This one was cute rather then harmful. It spelled out "HI" in the binary display lights on the front faceplate of the mainframe. As I recall Managment was none to happy, but the operators thought it a hoot.
Please "make a case" for virii, other than "it vaguely sounds correct to illiterate retards like myself".
Cuz it's more 1337, bitches. Sux0rz got pwn3d!!
I will always have fond memories of screwing with our computer class teacher with fake "Your PC is now Stoned!" viruses using DOS autoexec.bat files.. Those were the days :]
"get rid of adds"
Can we keep the subtracts?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* (stupid slashdot filter this I hve too many capitals...Little does it know that I've uploaded a virus! HAHA..opps hahahha)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
You are both wrong. The plural would be "virii" if and only if the singular were "virius". The correct pluralization is "viri".
It loosely meets the definition of a virus. It wasn't the first computer virus. It isn't very noteworthy, other than it was the first known computer virus which the author(s) took full credit, and provided their real names and accurate contact information. We have other words for this type of software now. You might even call it copy-protection, or DRM, today.
Computer viruses started off as an academic exercise. In other words, the goal was to create a self-reproducing program with survival instinct, similar to that of a real-world virus. According to Mark Ludwig's Little Black Book of Computer Viruses, the functional elements of a Computer Virus follow in the list below. I highly recommend the book, for anyone interested
Number 3 is really what separates a true "virus" from programs which are mislabeled as such. If the virus displays a message "I'm in your computer eating your data, nom nom nom!", it limits its own effectiveness. The virus will get eradicated, it will not survive in the wild. Which comes back to my point about this story. While this program loosely meets the definition of a virus, it was not written to be a self-reproducing entity with simulated survival instinct. It was primarily intended to prevent unauthorized copying. Its impact was limited to floppy disks with unauthorized copies of the program it was intended to protect from copying.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
You have about as much chance of getting people to stop using that as you do of getting them to stop saying 'boxen'.
A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.
Meh. I could care less.
Yes, obviously you care enough to write that you could care less. I, on the other hand could not possibly care les... Oh flapjacks!
Nevermind.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Was there any reason at all to even write this article (except to get people to watch the intrusive ad, I mean)? The whole thing consisted of name-checking the Brain virus and then pointing out that malware tookits exist. This is news? No background on Brain, no evolution of malware, no information on how Brain (or any later piece of malware) works, just "malware toolkits! Be very afraid!".
The whole article was completely devoid of anything but the shallowest once-over of the malware toolkit scene. Sometimes I really wonder what the Slashdot editorial staff is thinking when they select articles to publish. Yeah, I must be new here.
There's a difference. People who say 'boxen' (should) know that the correct word is 'boxes' and are (mostly) dabbling in old hacker humor. Whether they are beating a dead horse with their hacker humor is subjective and out of the scope of this post. To contrast, two types of people use 'virii': those who really think that it's the correct way to pluralize virus, and those who think it's another hacker humor attempt like 'boxen.' It's neither, and they need to stop doing it. Even if we were to use the "over-generalizing of grammatical rules" trick, the result still wouldn't be virii.
A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.
If we define "case" as "saying things that are not true", then yes.
Defining "case" as "a lot of people say it so it's right" then it's also true.
But for anything like grammatical correctness there's no case at all - it's simply a common misunderstanding caused by people dabbling with latin without any actual knowledge of it.
For how an actual case is made, see: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2139/what-is-the-plural-of-penis
True, although the actual plural is indeed viruses. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Usage_notes
Not everybody agrees with you
Anyone with any actual knowledge of Greek and Latin does, however. Ignorance is not a virtue - stop defending it.
Man this is going Viriial, its like viriises have taken over /.
The queen is dead, you insensitive clod! :)
Yes, they do it ad nauseum round here.
But you're post literally beg's the question as too weather you'll annoy the "languages evolve" mob by an exponential amount.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My car broke down last week. I had to take a tram and two bii to get to work.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You know, that's a terrible argument. You're saying it's wrong, but you're not giving any supporting evidence. I'm assuming that you know both Green and Latin to make such a statement. The good old "I'm smarter than you, so I'm right" doesn't cut it, especially when your audience may be as smart or smarter than you.
If virii is wrong, at least give us the translation of what virii means. In Latin, virii seems to translate to "The men of...". In Greek, it doesn't translate to anything.
So how correct or incorrect is virii? Well, if you consider "the men of..." would seem to convey the same idea of the biblical Legion demon (my name is legion, for we are many.). If a virus is one attacker (attack vector, or soldier), many could be conveyed as a legion. That would imply many men of. We are always very comfortable anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, would it be wrong to consider multiple virus to be the men of, or the army of, or the legion of? It would seem appropriate to follow that with the name of their creator. Virii haxor? Dear god, I hope I don't give an uber-leet script kiddie any ideas. Ok kids, be good, stay in school, m'kay?
I guess the most important thing we should remember is that language is what we've made of it. There are people who want to be linguistic purists. What are you being pure about? You've picked an arbitrary point in history, and have romanticized so much, you too believe there is to never be progress. I won't argue against the idea that many modern linguistic trends are wrong, but words adopted into common use, regardless of how badly they are spelled, or how awful they may be, they become words. Search on Google for "new words in [year]" (replace year with a number), and you'll find all kinds of interesting words that you probably believed existed "forever".
New words in 1806 2006.
I'm very happy that "cougar" and "tramp-stamp" became official words in 2010. Now I don't have to say "A lovely older woman with sexual interests a younger men, who has a tattoo on her lower back". "Cougar with a tramp stamp" not only has a nice ring to it, but it sounds real dirty. :)
So... It doesn't matter if you think you know Latin, Greek, or English. If everyone else says it's right, and the use is continued, in time they will be right. I'd be willing to bet the majority of what we say now (including this message) would have been impossible to decipher based on linguistic standards even a few hundred years ago. Don't even consider looking back more than about 450 years, "Modern English" didn't even exist.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.