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A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It will use this machine as a host to scan and infect other computers. When these new worm-invaded computers are controlled, the worm will continue to scan and infect other computers using these computers as hosts, and this behaviour will continue. Computer worms use recursive methods to copy themselves without host programs and distribute themselves based on exploiting the advantages of exponential growth, thus controlling and infecting more and more computers in a short time. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, even if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer.
Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the user's computer security and privacy. Researchers tend to classify malware into one or more sub-types.
The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, is one of the oldest computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It resulted in the first felony conviction in the US under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was written by a graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris, and launched on 8:30 pm November 2, 1988, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology network.
This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events.
Antivirus software, also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware or Software that is created specifically to help detect, prevent and remove malware such as viruses.
A backdoor is a typically covert method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer, product, embedded device, or its embodiment. Backdoors are most often used for securing remote access to a computer, or obtaining access to plaintext in cryptosystems. From there it may be used to gain access to privileged information like passwords, corrupt or delete data on hard drives, or transfer information within autoschediastic networks.
Linux malware includes viruses, Trojans, worms and other types of malware that affect the Linux family of operating systems. Linux, Unix and other Unix-like computer operating systems are generally regarded as very well-protected against, but not immune to, computer viruses.
Elk Cloner is one of the first known microcomputer viruses that spread "in the wild", i.e., outside the computer system or laboratory in which it was written. It attached itself to the Apple II operating system and spread by floppy disk. It was written around 1982 by programmer and entrepreneur Rich Skrenta as a 15-year-old high school student, originally as a joke, and put onto a game disk.
Scareware is a form of malware which uses social engineering to cause shock, anxiety, or the perception of a threat in order to manipulate users into buying unwanted software. Scareware is part of a class of malicious software that includes rogue security software, ransomware and other scam software that tricks users into believing their computer is infected with a virus, then suggests that they download and pay for fake antivirus software to remove it. Usually the virus is fictional and the software is non-functional or malware itself. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of scareware packages in circulation rose from 2,850 to 9,287 in the second half of 2008. In the first half of 2009, the APWG identified a 585% increase in scareware programs.
Mobile malware is malicious software that targets mobile phones or wireless-enabled Personal digital assistants (PDA), by causing the collapse of the system and loss or leakage of confidential information. As wireless phones and PDA networks have become more and more common and have grown in complexity, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure their safety and security against electronic attacks in the form of viruses or other malware.
Stoned is a boot sector computer virus created in 1987. It is one of the first viruses and is thought to have been written by a student in Wellington, New Zealand. By 1989 it had spread widely in New Zealand and Australia, and variants became very common worldwide in the early 1990s.
Robert Michael Slade, also known as Robert M. Slade and Rob Slade, is a Canadian information security consultant, researcher and instructor. He is the author of Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses, Software Forensics, Dictionary of Information Security and co-author of Viruses Revealed. Slade is the author of thousands of technical book reviews, today published on the techbooks mailing list and in the RISKS Digest, and archived in his Internet Review Project. An expert on computer viruses and malware, he is also the Mr. Slade of "Mr. Slade's lists".
A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus, a metaphor derived from biological viruses.
Andries Evert Brouwer is a Dutch mathematician and computer programmer, Professor Emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He is known as the creator of the greatly expanded 1984 to 1985 versions of the roguelike computer game Hack that formed the basis for NetHack. He is also a Linux kernel hacker. He is sometimes referred to by the handle aeb.
Operation Denver was an active measure disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Historian Thomas Boghardt popularized the codename "INFEKTION" based on the claims of former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) officer Günter Bohnsack, who claimed that the Stasi codename for the campaign was either "INFEKTION" or perhaps also "VORWÄRTS II". However, historians Christopher Nehring and Douglas Selvage found in the former Stasi and Bulgarian State Security archives materials that prove the actual Stasi codename for the AIDS disinformation campaign was Operation Denver. The operation involved "an extraordinary amount of effort — funding radio programs, courting journalists, distributing would-be scientific studies", according to journalist Joshua Yaffa, and even became the subject of a report by Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News.
United States v. Morris was an appeal of the conviction of Robert Tappan Morris for creating and releasing the Morris worm, one of the first Internet-based worms. This case resulted in the first conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In the process, the dispute clarified much of the language used in the law, which had been heavily revised in a number of updates passed in the years after its initial drafting. Also clarified was the concept of "unauthorized access," which is central in the United States' computer security laws. The decision was the first by a U.S. court to refer to "the Internet", which it described simply as "a national computer network."
The notion of a self-reproducing computer program can be traced back to initial theories about the operation of complex automata. John von Neumann showed that in theory a program could reproduce itself. This constituted a plausibility result in computability theory. Fred Cohen experimented with computer viruses and confirmed Neumann's postulate and investigated other properties of malware such as detectability and self-obfuscation using rudimentary encryption. His 1988 Doctoral dissertation was on the subject of computer viruses.
ANTI is a computer virus affecting Apple Macintosh computers running classic Mac OS versions up to System 6. It was the first Macintosh virus not to create additional resources within infected files; instead, it patches existing CODE resources.
Fileless malware is a variant of computer related malicious software that exists exclusively as a computer memory-based artifact i.e. in RAM. It does not write any part of its activity to the computer's hard drive, thus increasing its ability to evade antivirus software that incorporate file-based whitelisting, signature detection, hardware verification, pattern-analysis, time-stamping, etc., and leaving very little evidence that could be used by digital forensic investigators to identify illegitimate activity. Malware of this type is designed to work in memory, so its existence on the system lasts only until the system is rebooted.
Soon after the release of HyperCard in 1987, computer viruses appeared that targeted the application. The viruses were written in the HyperTalk programming language and typically spread by infecting the Home stack and then infecting other stacks from there.
References
- ↑ A short biography
- ↑ Cohen, Fred (1984). "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments" . Retrieved January 13, 2014.
- ↑ An Undetectable Computer Virus (academic paper)
- ↑ Burger, Ralph, 1991. Computer Viruses and Data Protection, pp. 19-20
- ↑ "Interview Fred Cohen". Archived from the original on 2014-01-13. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
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