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    Viruses

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    tsegadese4
    This document defines viruses and worms, and describes their history and effects. It notes that viruses piggyback on other programs while worms are self-contained. Early viruses spread via floppy disks and affected boot sectors. Later, email viruses like Melissa spread rapidly through address books. Worms replicate across networks and have caused large distributed denial of service attacks. Zombies have been used to send spam. Regular updates and antivirus software can help prevent infection.

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    Viruses

    Uploaded by

    tsegadese4
    22 views23 pages
    This document defines viruses and worms, and describes their history and effects. It notes that viruses piggyback on other programs while worms are self-contained. Early viruses spread via floppy disks and affected boot sectors. Later, email viruses like Melissa spread rapidly through address books. Worms replicate across networks and have caused large distributed denial of service attacks. Zombies have been used to send spam. Regular updates and antivirus software can help prevent infection.

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    This document defines viruses and worms, and describes their history and effects. It notes that viruses piggyback on other programs while worms are self-contained. Early viruses spread via floppy disks and affected boot sectors. Later, email viruses like Melissa spread rapidly through address books. Worms replicate across networks and have caused large distributed denial of service attacks. Zombies have been used to send spam. Regular updates and antivirus software can help prevent infection.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    22 views23 pages

    Viruses

    Uploaded by

    tsegadese4
    This document defines viruses and worms, and describes their history and effects. It notes that viruses piggyback on other programs while worms are self-contained. Early viruses spread via floppy disks and affected boot sectors. Later, email viruses like Melissa spread rapidly through address books. Worms replicate across networks and have caused large distributed denial of service attacks. Zombies have been used to send spam. Regular updates and antivirus software can help prevent infection.

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    Computer Viruses and Worms

    Samson Kalla
    Definition of Virus
     A virus is a small piece of software that
    piggybacks on real programs in order to get
    executed
     Once it’s running, it spreads by inserting
    copies of itself into other executable code or
    documents
    Computer Virus Timeline
     1949
    Theories for self-replicating programs are first developed.
     1981
    Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses “in the wild,” or in the public domain. Found on
    the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.
     1983
    Fred Cohen, while working on his dissertation, formally defines a computer virus as “a computer
    program that can affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a
    (possibly evolved) copy of itself.”
     1986
    Two programmers named Basit and Amjad replace the executable code in the boot sector of a floppy
    disk with their own code designed to infect each 360kb floppy accessed on any drive. Infected floppies
    had “© Brain” for a volume label.
     1987
    The Lehigh virus, one of the first file viruses, infects command.com files.
     1988
    One of the most common viruses, Jerusalem, is unleashed. Activated every Friday the 13th, the virus
    affects both .exe and .com files and deletes any programs run on that day.
    MacMag and the Scores virus cause the first major Macintosh outbreaks.
     …
    Worms
     Worm - is a self-replicating program,
    similar to a computer virus. A virus attaches
    itself to, and becomes part of, another
    executable program; however, a worm is
    self-contained and does not need to be part
    of another program to propagate itself.
    History of Worms
     The first worm to attract wide attention, the Morris
    worm, was written by Robert Tappan Morris, who
    at the time was a graduate student at Cornell
    University.
     It was released on November 2, 1988
     Morris himself was convicted under the US
    Computer Crime and Abuse Act and received three
    years probation, community service and a fine in
    excess of $10,000.

     Xerox PARC
    Worms…
     Worms – is a small piece of software that uses
    computer networks and security holes to replicate
    itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for
    another machine that has a specific security hole.
    It copies itself to the new machine using the
    security hole, and then starts replicating from
    there, as well.
     They are often designed to exploit the file
    transmission capabilities found on many
    computers.
    Zombies
     Infected computers — mostly Windows
    machines — are now the major delivery
    method of spam.

     Zombies have been used extensively to


    send e-mail spam; between 50% to 80% of
    all spam worldwide is now sent by zombie
    computers
    Money flow
     Pay per click
    Typical things that some current
    Personal Computer (PC) viruses do
     Display a message
    Typical things that some current
    Personal Computer (PC) viruses do
     Display a message
     Erase files
     Scramble data on a hard disk
     Cause erratic screen behavior
     Halt the PC
     Many viruses do nothing obvious at all
    except spread!
    Distributed Denial of Service
     A denial-of-service attack is an attack that
    causes a loss of service to users, typically
    the loss of network connectivity and
    services by consuming the bandwidth of the
    victim network or overloading the
    computational resources of the victim
    system.
    How it works?
     The flood of incoming messages to the target
    system essentially forces it to shut down, thereby
    denying service to the system to legitimate users.
     Victim's IP address.
     Victim's port number.
     Attacking packet size.
     Attacking interpacket delay.
     Duration of attack.
     MyDoom – SCO Group
    DDoS
    MyDoom
     26 January 2004: The Mydoom virus is
    first identified around 8am. Computer
    security companies report that Mydoom is
    responsible for approximately one in ten e-
    mail messages at this time. Slows overall
    internet performance by approximately ten
    percent and average web page load times by
    approximately fifty percent
    MyDoom…
     27 January: SCO Group offers a US $250,000
    reward for information leading to the arrest of the
    worm's creator.
     1 February: An estimated one million computers
    around the world infected with Mydoom begin the
    virus's massive distributed denial of service attack
    —the largest such attack to date.
     2 February: The SCO Group moves its site to
    www.thescogroup.com.
    Executable Viruses
     Traditional Viruses
     pieces of code attached to a legitimate
    program
     run when the legitimate program gets
    executed
     loads itself into memory and looks around
    to see if it can find any other programs on
    the disk
    Boot Sector Viruses
     Traditional Virus
     infect the boot sector on floppy disks and
    hard disks
     By putting its code in the boot sector, a
    virus can guarantee it gets executed
     load itself into memory immediately, and it
    is able to run whenever the computer is on
    Decline of traditional viruses
     Reasons:
    – Huge size of today’s programs storing on a
    compact disk
    – Operating systmes now protect the boot sector
    E-mail Viruses
     Moves around in e-mail messages
     Replicates itself by automatically mailing
    itself to dozens of people in the victim ’s e-
    mail address book
     Example: Melissa virus, ILOVEYOU virus
    Melissa virus
     March 1999
     the Melissa virus was the fastest-spreading virus
    ever seen
     Someone created the virus as a Word document
    uploaded to an Internet newsgroup
     People who downloaded the document and opened
    it would trigger the virus
     The virus would then send the document in an e-
    mail message to the first 50 people in the person's
    address book
    Melissa virus
     Took advantage of the programming
    language built into Microsoft Word called
    VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)
    Prevention
     Updates
     Anti-Viruses
     More secure operating systems

    e.g. UNIX
    Reference
     http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/code-red/newframes-small-log.gif
     http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0872842.html
    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/new-users/
     http://www.mines.edu/academic/computer/viri-sysadmin.htm

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