In the
early 1990s, writing viruses was done by children, students, with the aim of
self-affirmation, it was disorderly conduct. Now the creation of malware is a
criminal business, comparable in scale to the trade in narcotics and weapons.
The same viruses and vulnerabilities of different devices and operating systems
used by different departments in different countries for spying on different
people.
Source:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4f/ac/44/4fac442cf10330e37b4d0a1bf03e6d30.jpg
But first,
let's define what is a "computer virus ". In 1983 American scientist
Fred Cohen in his dissertation work on the study of self-replicating computer
programs, first introduced the term "computer virus".
In November
3, 1983, when the weekly seminar on computer security at the University of
Southern California proposed a project to create a self-propagating program,
which called "virus" . For debugging, it took 8 hours of computer
time on the machine to VAX 11/750 running the operating system Unix, and the
following week, November 10, held the first demonstration. The results of these
studies, Fred Cohen published a paper called "Computer viruses: Theory and
experiments" with a detailed description of the problem.
in the
works of American scientist John von Neumann (John von Neumann), which is also
known as the author of the basic principles of operation of a modern computer.
In these works described the theoretical foundations of self-replicating
mathematical machines.
Fundamentals
of the theory of self-propagating programs were laid in the 1940s in the works
of American scientist John von Neumann, which is also known as the author of
the basic principles of operation of a modern computer. In these works
described the theoretical foundations of self-replicating mathematical
machines.
I would
like to tell you about the viruses which at the time made of the "Epidemic
in the Internet" , but not always the creators of these viruses pursued
his goal of earning money.
Creeper
Source: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3523488878a0f04bb314831d1936b52e-c
First a
network virus Creeper appeared in the early 70-ies in the military computer
network Arpanet, the prototype of the Internet. The program was able to go
online via modem and store its copy on a remote machine. On infected systems,
the virus reveals itself with a message: I'm THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.
In General, the virus was harmless, but annoying staff.
Virdem
A German
programmer Ralf Burger in 1986 opened the possibility of creating its copies by
adding your code to a running DOS-format files COM. A prototype program, called
Virdem was demonstrated at the forum of the computer underground Chaos Computer
Club (December, 1986, Hamburg, Germany). This led to the writing of hundreds of
thousands of computer viruses partially or completely described using the idea.
In fact, this virus has given rise to mass virus infection.
Chameleon
Chameleon
(beginning in 1990), the first polymorphic virus. Its author, mark Washburn,
the basis for writing the virus took data on virus veins from the book
"Computer viruses. Disease of high technologies", Ralph Burger and
added advanced principles of semosavali virus Cascade — the property to change
the appearance of the virus body and the decryptor.
This
technology was quickly adopted and combined with "stealth technology"
and "reservation" allowed new viruses to successfully confront
existing antivirus packages.
With the
advent of this technology to fight viruses became much more difficult.
LoveLetter
Source:https://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/v-pics/love2.jpg
LoveLetter
is a script virus, May 5, 2000 hit a record of the "Melissa" virus in
expansion velocity. Only a few hours had affected millions of computers —
LoveLetter got into the Guinness Book of records.
The
situation developed rapidly. The number of victims has grown exponentially.
This virus
was spread by e-mail messages and IRC channels. Email virus can easily be
distinguished. The subject line is "ILOVEYOU" that immediately
catches the eye. In the letter contains the text "kindly check the
attached LOVELETTER coming from me" and an attached file named
"LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs". The virus is triggered only when the
user opened the attached file.
Virus sends
itself to all addresses found in the address book, email program, MS Outlook
infected computer, and wrote my copy to the files on the hard disk (thus
permanently overwriting their original contents). Victims of the virus was, in
particular, images in JPEG format, program, Java Script and Visual Basic
Script, and a number of other files. And even the virus hid the video and music
file formats MP2, and MP3.
In
addition, the virus has made some actions on the installation itself in the
system and the installation of a separate additional viral modules that are
downloaded from the Internet.
All this
suggests that the virus is VBS.LoveLetter is very dangerous. Along with the
direct corruption of data and integrity protection of the operating system, it
sent out a large number of message copies.
Questions:
1) What is
your opinion about computer viruses in the Internet ?
2)Do you
use an antivirus system ?
3)Do you
use a backup solution for important information ? If yes, which ones ? Tell us
about your experience.
Comments
I think I use some antivirus system. I don't care much about this stuff. Maybe because I have never been a victim of any viruses or attacks.
I don't use any specific kind of backup solution. If I have something really important I use dropbox to storage files and then I can have an access to them from any other computer.
I think that computer viruses are quite fascinating field. Especially masterpieces like Stuxnet:
https://www.wired.com/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/
read this article, it has better plot than many books!
I think that viruses have ups and downs. Downs are obvious, ups maybe not so much: viruses motivate people to maintain secure systems and i think its good.
I cannot agree with Sylwia that it's hard to have a virus. It's hard if you are offline, but being online it's not so hard. Of course, it depends on the way of using the Internet but still..
I believe I use the Internet in a clever way (if something like this exists), but I had some viruses. I don't know how, but I had.
In my opinion, it's impossible to be fully safe, but it's important to reduce probability as much as possible.
Nowadays we have to be very careful of what sites we visit. There are many so called click baites, which aim is to make you interested about the topic (usually by putting controversial heading) and thus visit the site. Viruses from such websites usually just post something on your Facebook without you knowing about it. But most of the time we are not controlling what we are downloading.
I can't imagine my computer not being secured by antivirus system, I believe it's the minimum if you want to TRY to be safe. But as Filip said, it's impossible to be fully safe if you are online. You never know if the program you're downloading will really just do what you expect.
Of course I use antivirus system, I try to be as safe as possible on the internet.
I try to backup my files regularly, but to be honest I very often forget about it.
If you want to ensure your files stay safe, you can back them up to the internet with a service like CrashPlan. CrashPlan is a well-known online backup service we like and recommend, but there are also competitors like BackBlaze, Carbonite, and MozyHome. For a low monthly fee (about $5 a month), these programs run in the background on your PC or Mac, automatically backing up your files to the service’s web storage. If you ever lose those files and need them again, you can restore them.
Some viruses can be really interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35mNhYY3O3k
2)Yes i use an anti-virus, yet i'll not tell which one as it is not something to publicly announce on website such as this.
3)Of course i have some backup solutions. My best one is external portable hard drive.
For me viruses on the Internet are one of the worst things that people make. Personally I don't use antiviruses system. I try to be carful and I care about my computer. Antiviruses slow down computer very much. Of course we should use backup solution. Personally I download my files for spare disc. My friend had one virus which blocked her computer and she had to pay and she lost everything. She only opened mail.
My opinion is that today, computer viruses are mostly used as a way to scrap some money (ransomeware type, "WannaCry" anyone?) or to spy on/destroy certain targets (developed by governments and/or hackers for hire, "Stuxnet" anyone?). Long gone are times when it was purely for fun and stuff thing. The internet has grown, spread, security improved and you have to try to catch one today (if you are conscious on what you are doing).
Of course backup is always a nice thing to have, regardless if you are hit with a malicious software or a hardware failure. Highly recommended. I do use backups on separate hard drives.
I don't have backup which is the most stupid thing in my life, because my hard drive is in to really good shape.
There are a lot of viruses out there but there always will be a human weak chain that causes most of the problem. Most viruses would not work if you would not let them.
2) Yes I have one build on in Windows and from time to time using Malwarebytes to scan everything else. The full version of it is way too annoying and sometime blocking VPN sites, proxies and other things you would like to use.
3)Do you use a backup solution for important information ? If yes, which ones ? Tell us about your experience.
Some files stored in cloud. Some on separate HDD. I am trying to update it regularly to minimize the potential data losses.
There are many tricks used by hackers. I keep all my private data on external devices.
Now if I get a love letter on my email, I surely won't open it ;) by the way, really tricky idea with the name, funny thing.
It is very interesting how viruses have developed. It is hard to imagine that at the very beginning they were harmless.
Big companies are paying people just for sharing their opinions!
You can make from $5 to $75 per each survey!
And it's available to anybody from any country!