History of Computer Viruses? - Types of Computer Viruses

History of Computer Viruses

It can be argued that the history of computer science begins with Charles Babbage (B. 1791, D).

1871) Leading work in the nineteenth century. If we assume that computer science has emerged Around 1820 when Mr. Babbage started tampering with his inter-engine, then, as I have written it today, The field of computer science is not far away from its 200th birthday.

It is interesting to note, then, a major aspect of modern computing, which causes economic damage worldwide, fifteen More than a million times in every billion dollars and literature of scholars has been referred to Computer science did not appear until 1982. 

In that year, sixteen decades after birth Computer Science, A 9th Grader in Mount Lebanese High School wrote a computer program in Pennsylvania They called Elk Cloner The main aspect of modern computing, which I previously mentioned, is obvious Computer Virus and Richard "Rich" Sparta (b.1967) Elk Cloner Program was the first computer The virus is ever written.

Just because the first software implementation of a computer virus was not realized until 1982,

However, this does not mean that no one predicts the ability of machines or software automatically Repeat yourself. Automatic self-replication, by the way, I'm considered the most Important, and really essential, the property of a computer virus.

I later provide another formal definition of having a computer virus, but for now, the reader may just assume that A computer virus is a malicious computer program that has the ability to auto-replicate automatically. we will do Elk Cloner virus, as well as many others, come back to the next part, but let us first find out
The time when computer virus was the only theory; That is, the prehistory of computer virus.

If the history of computer virus starts with Rich Scarlata at a Pennsylvania High School, then A The prehistory of computer virus begins with John von Neumann (B.D. 1903, D. 1957) at the Institute. Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ In 1948, von Neumann presented "The General and Logical Theory" In the Hymson Symposium on Cerebral Mechanism in Behavior.

This work was published in a journal of the same name in 1951, and further work was done by von Neumann in the field of Automata the upcoming. Automata is traditionally run as a mechanical device Imitation of man; However, the phrase has also come to refer to a machine which performs a function
Work according to a predetermined set of coded instructions.

It should be clear that the next definition of automata seems much like a computer Software. Von Neumann's work laid its foundation
The theoretical foundation for self-replicating automata, and therefore, also for self-replicating software.

In Vaughan's first approach to von Neumann's self-replicating automata modeling, which he said "Kinetic model", they described a self-replicating physical machine with access to raw materials sea.

Which he can use to make new copies of himself. The machine described is part of memory The tape on which a set of coded instructions is present; 

This is a program. This program includes Using the manipulator, the necessary instructions for recovering parts from the sea, collect those parts in one Duplicate the original machine and then copy the contents of the memory tapes to the blank Memory Tape of the newly assembled machine Although the sound of a virtuoso, von Neumann's kinetic

Model of self-replicating automata does not lend itself well to analyze with any amount Mathematical rigidity Thus, in his later work and on the suggestion of his friend, Mathematician and fellow Manhattan project collaborator, Stanislav Ullam (1909, D. 1984), von. Newman further defines his model of self-replicating automata while describing through further procedures. Cellular automation instead of three-dimensional physical machines in the kinetic model.

Using cellular automation processes, von Neumann describes a universal manufacturer. whereas The technical details of the universal manufacturer are beyond the scope of this report, the reader should know that it is often seen as a demonstration of the logical requirements required for machine self-sufficiency. 

However, important insights that allowed von Neumann to make his universal producer (And as well as their kinetic model) are entitled to treatment, because very insight is straight Applicable for our subsequent study of computer viruses. It is an important insight that replication The component of the self-replicating machine is used in two different etiquettes: first, it is active The component of the construction system, and second, it is the target of an inactive copy process.

Computer viruses are still the same. However, later mathematicians, scientists, and biologists have built a lot on von
Newman's self-replicating automata work, to the extent that an academic named With Risk (b) is. 1936) describes a fully functional self-replicating program written in the assembler language Siemens 4004/35 computer system In 1972, I do not want to work here to expand further. whereas In that fund of research, there may be models that accurately describe self-replicas and
Broadcasting computer virus, Akademia has never been a major driving force in designing and driving Development of the actual computer virus. 

Actually, there is no evidence that the author of the earliest Computer virus also heard about academic work on self-replicating automata. Is for him The reason is that I quickly choose to extend the history of the past and move towards the history of
Real computer virus

Before we move forward, however, we should quickly accept the Prehistory Trivium Perhaps it gives some inspiration to call themselves a virus for malicious programs. 

I Refer to the use of the word 'bug' to describe the error or fault in the computer system Produces a false or unpredictable result. A general, yet imaginary, derivation for 'bug' in context The computer system is like this:

In 1946, when [Grace Murray] Hopper was freed from active duty, he joined Harvard faculty in Computation Lab where he continued his work Mark II and Mark III. He detected an error in a mishap trapped in a relay in Mark II,

The word bug is being coined. This bug was carefully removed and tapped on the log book. Stemming with the bug first, today we call bugs in a program in a bug.

In true sense, the word 'bug' has been defined by electronic computers for decades.

Thomas Edison (B. 1847, D. 1931), in 1878 as a "small defect and difficulties" in an engineering project.

For the record, it was not even Grace Murray Hopper (B.D. 1906, D. 1992), who found this post Computer, but a technician named Bill Burke, who removed the pest from the machine and Tap on a page in the log book with annotation, "Moth in the relay, a first real case of being a bug found. "Who has found the manga, it is likely that Rear Admiral Hopper will recreate its story.

Popularization and continuous use of the word in terms of computing. no matter how The word 'bug' is used in the field of computing, it is another example with von Using Newman's Cellular Automation Processes from Applications of Concepts and Concepts Biography on Computer Science However, the most interesting is that 'bug' is a synonym of 'virus', and When he coined the phrase, he could not lose the connection on Leonard "Lane" Edelman (b. 1945) Computer virus' or around 1984.

The First Computer Viruses (1982 - 1986)

ELK CLONER

THE PROGRAM WITH A PERSONALITY

IT WILL GET ON ALL YOUR DISKS

IT WILL INFILTRATE YOUR CHIPS

YES, IT’S CLONER!

IT WILL STICK TO YOU LIKE GLUE

IT WILL MODIFY RAM TOO

SEND IN THE CLONER!

- The output from Rich Skrenta’s 1982 Apple II computer virus, “Elk Cloner”

The above text is the message displayed by previously written computer viruses. Elk Cloner, Rich Scariana's 1982 virus, a boot sector virus for the Apple II platform. A boot sector is an area of ​​one Disk or storage device in which the machine code is automatically loaded and executed by A The computer system is built in firmware. Since the code in the boot sector is executed automatically, so The computer has become a commonplace to hide the virus, and Elk Cloner was the first of that ilk. 

The case of Elk Cloner, when a computer was booted from a floppy disk infected with a virus, the virus' The code will be loaded into the system's memory and will be executed. On every 50th boot of the system, The above message will be shown to the user, which may be expected behavior was done. 

A computer program that only displays a message to the user, however, is not a computer Virus. The first computer virus that Elk Cloner created was the ability to self-replicate it. Once was a system Infected with Elk Cloner, the uninfected floppy disk was ever inserted into the machine Elk will copy the cloner into the boot sector of the disk, which will allow it to be infected.

It is immediately obvious that Elk Cloner was not malicious in the same way as modern Computer viruses and malware Rather than trying to steal or destroy data, the virus was only one Practical jokes should be done on the friends of young Mr. Scarenta. 

Although the elk cloner was not destructive, Malicious behavior is considered to be wrong. Therefore, elk Cloner and other early viruses that only cause trouble to the user of the infected machine can be considered Computer virus under the informal definition of the phrase presented in the previous section.

After describing the technical details of the Elk Cloner virus at a high level, we now ask: Why would it be A 15-year-old high school student writes such a program? The answer, as previously mentioned, is That Mr. Skarta wanted to prank their friends. At that time, he and his friends often had a business Pirated copies of games through a floppy disk. Mr. 

Scarpetta had a patent to modify those games that he was

Delivering your friends in such a way that to reach some particular position in the game, a message Will be displayed by Mr. Skerrante. This type of behavior is in the present-centric language

Logic is known as a bomb. Because his friends had hurt him accepting discs, Mr. Scarlett was left to come up with a new way of annoying his friends, lest they become angry. 

It was it The desire to annoy your friends when they were playing the game but without the ability to physically hand The game disc, which takes Mr. Scarta to find ways to get his code in lesson his system Direct fashion In the memory of Mr. Scarenta, he follows the moment in which he realizes that he can do Continue to bother your friends:

This was the moment when I realized that I could essentially get my schedule to move From around I could give it to my motive, hiding it in the resident The machine's RAM between the floppy changes, and preventing a ride on the next floppy

He will be inserted. Wow. that would be cool. Insights without implementation Waste, so I went to work.

Although Mr. Scarta is here meaning that their program has the ability to auto-replicate itself Was 'quiet', he thinks how the revolutionary has mentioned a small cognitive dissonance about him The search was in a posting of USENET in 1990, he said the following:

I do not even have my Apple II, I left it. I wrote a lot of stuff for Apple II - Unclear adventure game, a small compiler, a toy multi-user operating system. The stupid hack I ever made the most interest and is alive to this day.

Mr. Skerta believes that his elk cloner program was revolutionary or stupid, though it is Maybe irrelevant What matters is that Elk Cloner was the first example of a class of software

As of November 2011, about fourteen million members have developed to include (as counted by unique Virus signature in modern anti-virus products)

Supporting for a moment, I must admit that three programs, each has been freely written  Before the release of Elk Cloner, some are considered computer viruses. First, such The program, called Creeper, was written by Robert Thomas in 1971. 

While the creeper was really self-sufficient, it repeated itself in a closed network, which was deliberately configured to allow A process on a node to write data on a node and execute the code on the second node.

In addition, after displaying an initial message and repeating itself on other network nodes, creeper has Never been implemented As such, the creeper does not meet the test of malice, as it was Nothing more than a proof-of-concept that can be copied data copied over the network as described earlier.

Currently, the program code should be executed. Another such half-viral website, the author was unknown Webbie was a program that was really self-replicating and malicious, but it only repeated itself

a local machine. 

Its maliciousness arose from the fact that it kept repeating itself as long as it did not The room was left on the disk, so other processes of disk resources were starved. However, Wabbit cannot A computer virus is considered as it did not have the ability to disperse itself on any other system. On which it was originally executed.

Although it was definitely malicious software, Webbie was not a virus Because it requires a human user to load it on each new system. The third program can be anythingAn early example of a virus is considered ANIMAL, written by John Walker (b. 1950). Was ANIMAL Game for UNIVAC system in which the computer user will ask simple questions The animal was thinking about the attempt to think about it or what the animal was in the mind of the user.

On loading, ANIMAL will copy the user to each directory in itself. Because of the user, The directory often shared with other users on the multipurpose system, the game repeated itself soon Almost all user accounts. Once the user with the superuser privileges (root) executed the program Every single user account on the system will be copied to each directory. Like a creeper,

However, the ANIMAL computer virus does not meet the criterion for malware. Author Just intend to spread your non-malicious game to as many users as possible. I present as proof ANIMAL's non-malicious intention comments from the source code of the module responsible for copying Game for new directory:

I hope we can now agree that Elk Cloner was actually the world's first computer virus. If in fact, he What is the matter, so what happened next? The brain did it. The brain gets the distinction of being the world's first Computer viruses for MS-DOS systems, and the first IBM compatible virus.

Like Elk Cloner, Brain

The boot sector of storage media is also infected. The primary difference between the two viruses,

However, it was that the brain was basically more comprehensive than its authors. In an interesting In the history of computer viruses, brain events have changed many times Spread yourself on more systems than ever before in your writers. You see, the brain was never intended only (Or, therefore, its authors have said) to be malicious towards people of a particular class: 

who was pirated Like the author's commercial software Elk Cloner, the malicious task of brain virus was for buses.

worried; It did this to bring the software pirate to the authors so that they could be disinfected Payment system and demand.

By that end, two brothers named Basil, author of the brain virus

And Amjad Farooq Alvi from Lahore in Pakistan actually included his name, address, and telephone The number within the virus, However, what he could not think was the boundary of his mind.

Will spread. 

A 1988 article in Time Magazine stated that the virus had repeated itself There were over 100,000 floppy disks across the world, much larger than the establishment Brother's Professional Software

We see that the age of the computer virus is marked by innocence. The precursor of Has a modern crisis become remarkably benign compared to their new Counterparts In an interview with a computer analyst who analyzed brain virus twenty-five Years ago, Alvi brothers had said that modern malware is not unfamiliar to them Created, and this new generation of destruction and theft is nothing but criminal activity. When asked How they are considered their own viruses, the brothers replied, "Friendly.

The Response (1984)

Whereas initial computer viruses can be portrayed as relatively flawless and benign In nature, at least one person saw the ability to become a major threat to them. Frederick "Fred" Cohen (b. 1957) was the first academician to publish work in the literature of computer science scholars.

Ways to Protect Computer Systems Against Computer Viruses and Threats Present. His definition of a computer virus, such a first definition, was published in the "computer" letter

Virus Theory and Use (20) "in 1984. The definition is as follows:

We define a computer 'virus' as a program that can 'infect' other programs by modifying To include them with a possibly developed copy of themselves. With a transit property, a virus Can be spread to a computer system or network using the authority of each

Users use it to infect their programs. Every program that gets infected can also function A virus and this kind of infection increases.

A computer virus is clearly missing from the misleading definition of Cohen Barbarism, In fact, Cohen did not consider maliciousness as the expected feature of a computer virus, The following quotes are attached:

It should be noted that no virus should be used for rogue purposes or should not be a Trojan Horse

Of course, definitions should be developed over time to keep those concepts in mind, which they want to describe.

Today, in the opinion of this author, a person will have a lot of trouble finding a savvy Areas of computing that clearly do not equal the phrase computer virus with malicious software Intent For that reason, and as discussed in the previous sections, this report considers one A useful definition of computer virus Cohen's basic definition is complementary Malicious requirement

Although Dr. Cohen's paper was the first to use the phrase 'computer virus' in scholars Work, he credits the phrase "Leonard" Lennen Edelman (1945) for the creation of the phrase. Mentioned in The last part which Dr. Between Edelman's use of 'virus' was inspired by a perceived similarity Biological systems and computer systems Providing further evidence to this suggestion that Dr.

Adleman is not only a professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, but he is Also a professor of molecular biology. However, other members of the computing community, as we Soon to see, there were not so soon to attract the same parallel.

Research costs money, so researchers need to write a grant proposal.

The committee that reviews such grant proposals determines whether it should be approved Generally, the population is expected to be populated by the members of the academic community

The proposed research is targeted. In a keynote address for one of the first academic conferences On computer virus, Dr. Cohen shared some reviews he had received from the National The Science Foundation Committee requests funds for research in practical defense for a proposal. computer viruses. Especially interesting is the following quote:

... In fact, the whole area of ​​'virus' is very publicized. Sound Engineering Practice Are Not It is believed. Comparing biological systems is the best silly. PI is not likely to Produce any interesting basic research results.

It's interesting, entertaining, and perhaps it's worth noting that many agencies, With NSF, today offers millions of dollars to do research with the intention of stemming The flow of malware could not have been done by the same agencies and experts within twenty-five years ago. Even the belief that such a precarious threat can exist.

Thank you, Dr. Cohen was no different from his work because he kept publishing this topic well In the 1990s Over time, most computer scientists have agreed with him.

Signs and theories about computer viruses and their work later worked as a theory Behind the development of anti-virus software

Closing of the Record

Although computer viruses and new types of malicious software are newcomers In the field of computing, they affect every computer user. 

As such, it is interesting to see how modern Malicious software that developed from relatively innocent tinkering of the initial computer

Hobbyists That computer virus affects every person who uses computers today

There is ample evidence that the story of those involved in its initial development should be told. I hope that This report is completed through.

There has definitely been a lot in the world of a computer virus, from which I have left:

Viruses and other malicious software have attacked millions of computer systems, anti-virus has become A multi-billion dollar industry, and able to target the latest generations of malicious software Full industrial facilities instead of personal computer systems But that was all started somewhere. This is the story of that startup.

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