Ilya Aleksandrov
History of computer viruses
They are already accustomed to them. School teachers of informatics are not afraid of them, they do not write about them on the first stripes of newspapers. But they continue to fulfill their destructive role in the life of users of computers.
Prerefficers of electronic epidemics
To say where and when the first virus appeared, it is impossible, since there are no such data in nature. If the "computer" of the Charles Babbja, the "father" of the first computing car, there were no viruses, by the mid-seventies of the last century they became very common and unpleasant for most phenomenon. Nevertheless, the prerequisites for their creation appeared almost immediately with the creation of the first computer.
Back in 1940, Mathematics John von Neuman wrote a book in which self-replicating mathematical machines were described, that is, the principles that have formed the basis of all viruses. In 1959, American science Magazine SCIENTFIC AMERICAN has published the article L. Penrose, who spoke about independently propagating biological structures. The author considered the ability of such structures to mutations, activation and reproduction. Another scientist, F. Stahl, obtained from this knowledge article implemented in practice. Working by the Operator in the Research Laboratory, he had access to the most powerful computer for that time - IBM 650. The experiment was very surprised by the strand, surpassing all his expectations. The resulting "mutation" of mathematical algorithms, the electronic "Zvek" deleted all the traces of his "parents", who were present in the system, after which she self-esteem.
Naturally, all of the above works and experiments were directed not in order for the current virus writers to throw out a new "infection" on the Internet megabytes. Initially, these studies belonged to the field of creating artificial intelligence were academic interest. However, any discovery made in peaceful purposesmay be without much difficulties turned into a powerful weapon of destruction.
In 1961, the game "Darwin" was very popular among the computer. Her plot and meaning were simple: the player led the "race," which was supposed to destroy its competitors. Won the one who captures the whole given under the gameplay rAM. Special actions in the game did not need: it was necessary only to propagate the RAM to their free cells belonging to their race or grab the cells of the enemy. A similar algorithm is very similar to the logic of the work of destructive programs.
The wide distribution of computer networks has become a catalyst for the appearance of the first destructive programs - computer viruses.
70s: Start
The appearance of the world's first computer virus was recorded at the beginning of the 70s of the last century, when APRANET is on the expanses of the Military Computer Network modern Internet - Creeper was found. The virus was written for common in those days. operating system Tenex in which he penetrated, spreading through a modem connection. The inscription is periodically displayed on the screen of infected computers: "I'm The Creeper: Catch Me If You Can". Creeper's destructive actions did not commit to only this message annoying users. A little later, the "Antidiet" was written for him - the Reaper program that found a virus file and removed it. It spread, by the way, similar to CreePer. It can be said that the world's first antivirus was created "by analogy with a malicious program."
In 1974, the "frequent guest" on various servers had a program with a cute animal husbandry name Rabbit. "Rabbit" nothing but the spread and reproduction of yourself, did not. The program has been reproduced at a huge speed, gradually occupying all system resources. Sometimes Rabbit even caused servers failure.
Another example is the PERVADING ANIMAL logic game for the EXEC 8 operating system, the meaning of which was guessing the user of the riddled animal program. If he could not succeed, the game offered to modernize it, after which it appeared the opportunity to ask additional leading questions.
The modified version of the program strangely started to copy to other directory, as a result of which after a while in all folders hard disk It contained a copy of Pervading Animal. Since at the time every kilobyte of space was "on the weight of gold", such a behavior of the game was happy. It is still not clear whether this is a programmer error or the idea of \u200b\u200bvirus writers. However, the problem was quickly solved - the new version of the Exec 8 operating system was based on another type of file system, on which the program clog the file space could no longer.
80s: First epidemics
By the eighties of the last century, the computer stopped being a luxury available only to the chosen. PC owners are becoming more and more, in addition, the exchange of information between users using electronic announcements boards (BBS - Buletin Board System) has achieved an international scale.
In 1981, a truly massive viral epidemic occurred. Computers II computers are widespread at that time. ELK CLONE virus was recorded in boot sectors Doubles at the time of contacting them. ELK Clone distorted the image on the monitor, displayed various text messages, forced the text to flash. Increhensive users have shown from the actions of the virus to a stupor, while he continued to "move" from one computer to another.
In 1983, the American programmer Len Aidelman for the first time used the term "virus", which he identified self-magazing programs.
In 1986, a 19-year-old Pakistani bassita Faruk Alvi wrote a Brain virus. As well as ELK Clone, Brain hit the boot sector floppy disks. The program was not focused on any devastating functions, it only changed the label of all disks on "(c) brain." According to the author, he chased only one goal - to find out the level of computer piracy in his country. But after a few weeks after the activation of the virus, thousands of computers around the world were infected, which caused a real perolet among users and a storm of discussions in the media. In Brain, the reception was first used when, when reading an infected disc sector, the virus was substituted instead of the selected section.
In 1988, the first malicious program was created, which did not just infect the computer, but also applied to him with real harm. This virus was created at the University of Lehi, in which, by the way, he had previously mentioned Fred Cohen. Lehigh virus destroyed information on disks, hitting system files Command.com. The presence of qualified specialists at the university was salvation - per wall educational institution He did not get his way. However, a considerable role in eliminating the threat of an epidemic was played by the algorithm of Lehigh itself - during the formatting of the Winchesters, he self-deducted with the rest of the information.
At the same time began to actively develop softwarewho defended computers from viruses. Antivirus programs The time was simple scanners that were trying to detect viral code in programs through contextual search. Another common "medicine" from malicious programs of that time were "immunizers". This type of software modified all programs in such a way that the viruses consider them already infected and did not perform any actions in relation to them. After the amount of viruses increased thousands of times, the use of immunizers was already useless.
Antivirus firms most often consisted of two or three people and their products were sold for the symbolic amount or distributed free. But the prevalence of protective programs was very low, and the continuous appearance of new viruses made them powerless. Internet at that time did not have time to "break out" from the "hugs" of scientists and the military, and to be updated without global Network It was almost impossible.
In the mid-1980s, the term "Virus Hoax" appeared - "viral hoax". At the end of the eighties, users were panically afraid of viruses: myths about programs that are out of order of the PC hardware, excited the mind of each computer owner. Virus Hoax was nothing more than false rumors about new computer epidemics. A story is remembered when one joker sent to different BBS messages about the appearance of a new virus, which spread through modems that operated at a speed of information transfer 2400 bits per second. In order not to infect the virus, the author recommended switching to modems at a speed of 1200 bits / s. And what do you think? The mass of users threw faster modems for their "security".
In 1988 there was a first epidemic caused by a network computer virus. Subsequently, such viruses became referred to as "worms". Created by some Robert Morris, the program struck computers working under UNIX OS. The creator's plans did not make harm to the system, the worm had only to penetrate the ARPANET network and remain unnoticed there. The virus had the ability to open passwords in the OS, and in the list of executing processes, the Morris's brainchild was displayed as an ordinary user process. The worm rapidly self-impeded and devoured all the free resources of the computer, as a result of which whole servers were out of order. Some of them were able to return to work only five days, since the vaccines against the worm did not exist. During his "walking around the world", the virus struck about 6,000 computer systems, torn even computers of the NASA research center. Robert Morris got 400 hours of public works, but entered the story as the author of the first devastating network worm.
90s: polymorphic viruses
In the early 90s of the last century, the English company Sophos, which worked by Jan Khuchar, Ed Wilding and Peter Layer, began to release the magazine Virus Bulletin. Virus Bulletin talked about computer viruses, as well as about all aspects of protection against them. The authors of the magazine were programmers, heads of antivirus companies, software developers. The magazine was non-profit: in his entire history, it was not printed in it advertising announcement. Because of this, Virus Bulletin was not widespread. His readers were mainly professionals in the field of IT ( information technologies), as well as employees of computer firms.
In 1990, a new type of malicious programs appeared - polymorphic viruses. The "polymorphism" was called the technology at which the virus could not be found by a scanner, looking for viruses using fragments of the already known malicious code. Polymorphism allows programs to generate code during execution, with the result that a copy of the virus on each new infected computer will differ from the previous one. The first such virus was Chameleon, written by Mark Kabi. After the appearance of polymorphic programs, an integral part of the antivirus was an emulator for the decryption of codes used by Evgeny Kaspersky.
In the same year, in Bulgaria, which was the center of world virus, a specialized BBS appeared, with which every wishes could download malicious programs. Conferences devoted to programming viruses appeared in UseNet.
At the same time, the book "Little Black Book On Computer Viruses" Marka Ludwig was published. She became the "Bible" of all the creators of viruses. The so-called "VX-scene" was formed - a community of programmers specializing in creating computer viruses.
Malicious program designers
In 1992, a hacker, known under the nickname Dark Avenger, released the MTE utility (Mutation Engine). With it, anyone, even the most primitive virus could be made polymorphic. The Peach virus endowed with the ability to bypass anti-virus software was created by the same person. Peach removed the database of the CENTRAL POINT AntiVirus program. This program, without finding a database, believed that it was launched for the first time, and created it again. Thus, the virus has progressed and continued to infect the system.
A group of programmers known on the network like Nowhere Man released VCL virus designer (Virus Creation Laboratory). From now on, any schoolboy, even who does not own programming languages, could be armed with the designer and collect a virus of any type and destructive power. With the advent of VCL, and so considerable "stream" of new computer pests was just huge. Is it wondering that a few days after entering the light of Windows 3.11, the first destructive program for this platform appeared? Win.vir_1_4 hit the executable operating system files, leading some of them to disrepair.
The first arrested virus writer
During 1993-94, the light saw new virus designers: PS-MPC and G2. Malicious programs generated by them became the most common danger on the Internet.
At the same time, a real "boom" was held among antivirus manufacturers - their programs finally became the mandatory component to almost any OS. Even Microsoft decided to penetrate the security market, which released Microsoft Antivirus (MSAV). Initially, the program was popular, but later the largest software manufacturer in the world stopped developing the product.
Leadership in this area gradually won the company Symantec, part of which became the largest producers Anti-virus software: CENTRAL POINT and FIFTH Generation Systems.
The epidemic of a new polymorphic virus, Pathogen, was no longer an event out of a series of outgoing, all the events were all started to get used to this. However, it was the first virus that was found and convicted. The unemployed Christopher Paul for creating malicious programs was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Attack on Microsoft.
In 1995, all paca testers discovered with the Windows 95 operating system were infected with the Form boot virus. Fortunately, one of them discovered non-carry, and on the counters of the stores there was a normal, unreleased system.
In August of the same year, the first MacroVirus appeared, written in WordBasic, built into text editor MS Word. CONCEPT Macrowurus was infected with hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe, as a result of which he has long been leading in statistical studies of computer journals.
In 1996, the first epidemic was survived windows users 95 - their computers were amazed by the boza boot virus. In July of the same year, macrovirus creators switched from Word to the editor spreadsheets MS Excel, having released the Laroux virus for him.
It was not forced to wait and resident viruses using the "zero ring" of the OS. Win95.punch loaded into the system as a VXD driver, intercepted access to files and infected them.
Anti-virus slots
By 1997, Linux operating system, previously considered a stronghold of "purity and stability", was no longer a platform free from viruses. Linux.bliss, distributed through the Usenet conferences, infected executable files of this OS.
In the same year, two new types of worms spread through IRC and FTP were noted. Of particularly large amounts could "boast" IRC, in many respects because of its popularity, as well as numerous "holes" MIRC - the main client of such networks.
Under the end of the twentieth century, the scandals among antivirus producers began to be frequent in pursuit of leadership. Thus, McAfee's representatives announced that its programmers found a mistake in Dr.Solomon's antivirus. The essence of the statement was reduced to the fact that Dr.Solomon's could find new and technically advanced viruses only in a special "enhanced" mode, which switched only after finding ordinary, primitive worms. As a result, the antivirus showed good high-speed results when scanning unreleased discs, and excellent detection indicators when working with infected files. In response, Dr.Solomon`s filed a lawsuit to the court on McAfee, the cause of which was the "incorrectly built advertising company". As a result, the whole "fuel" ended with the purchase of McAfee control package of DR.Solomon`s.
After some time, a public statement was made by Taiwanese developers from Trend Micro, accused McAfee and Symantec in allegedly "violations of their patent for data scanning." The world was immediately represented by evidence of "sinless" companies, but Trend Micro has achieved its own, having received excellent free advertising in the media.
The most destructive viruses
Continue a detailed history of computer viruses up to this day does not make sense, since hundreds and thousands of new malicious programs occur annually. I will be limited only by a brief story about the most famous viruses that appeared after 1997:
CIH (1998) - The damage caused by the virus was about 80 million dollars. The virus was written by a programmer from Taiwan, and became one of the most destructive in history. "Chih" infected executable files and activated every year on April 26 - on the day of the anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP. CIH overwriting Flashbios, after which motherboards Become unsuitable for use. The first and last virus that caused the harm to the PC hardware.
Melissa (1999) - On March 26, 1999, this Macrovirus spread e-mail, infected about 20% office computers around the world. The largest corporations, such as Intel, were forced to stop working inside their local networks. Damage - from 300 to 500 million dollars.
Iloveyou (2000) - Script written on Visual Basic macro-language. Just like Melissa, spread by email with the letter "I Love You". The virus sent its copies according to all the address book data. mail client. All logins and passwords found by the worm on the computer were sent to the author's author. The latter, by the way, did not try to hide: he is a resident of the Philippines, where punishments for computer crimes are not provided.
Code Red (2001) - Network worm that uses an error in network service Microsoft IIS. On a given day, infected computers were to start a DDoS attack on the list of various servers, among which were the US government systems. Huge scales of the epidemic and as a result - losses of 2.5 billion (!) Dollars.
Blaster (2003) - Network worm that has displayed a message about the need to reboot on infected computers. A few days after its release on the Internet (August 11), millions of computers around the world were infected.
Sobig.f (2003) - Network worm, spread by email. Breeding with a huge speed of the virus downloaded on the infected computer additional files, "Burning" traffic and system resources. An interesting feature - September 10, the virus stopped its activities, no longer representing the threat to the user. Author Sobig.f, for information about which Microsoft offered 250 thousand dollars, not found so far.
Bagle (2004) - Network worm, distributed by classical method using file attachments in emails. A special "loophole" was installed on the infected computer, through which the attacker received full access to the system. The virus has more than a hundred modifications.
MyDoom (2004) - In January 2004, this virus lightningly spread throughout the Internet, as a result of which the average speed of downloading sites in the global network decreased by 50%. The worm owns a record for the speed of distribution: less than a day was infected by about two million computers. The exact figure is impossible due to the scale of the epidemic. The virus was created by an unknown programmer as an experiment, and independently ceased its activities on February 12 of the same year.
Sasser (2004) - The virus caused a "break" in the work of French satellite channels Data transfer, canceled some airlines, not to mention ordinary computers whose work was completely suspended. Sasser distributed thanks to the error in the Windows 2000 and XP security system, starting the port scanner on the infected computer. The virus was written by a 17-year-old German schoolboy. Interesting the fact that the guy launched the virus on the network on the day of his majority.
No end and edges
The history of computer viruses is not fully completed, continuing today. Perhaps while you read these lines, some provincial programmer writes new virus, even more cunning and destructive than all of the above.
Well, it remains only to us to hope for the mercy of the manufacturers of antiviruses and follow the security of their systems.
application
Mobile viruses
In 2000, a virus was first found for the Palmos platform. The PHAGE.936 program passed between the PDA during transmission through the IR port. In infection pocket computer Some files could be deleted, and applications are often spontaneously closed. Since then, several dozen viruses have appeared for various PDA platforms, although they are not so diverse and "bending" as their "counterparts" for personal computers.
To date, the malware for smartphones do not cause surprise. The first virus for Symbian OS, became the Cabir virus. He did not commit any destructive actions and was created only to demonstrate the potential susceptibility to mobile devices to viral attacks and epidemics. The worm spread through Bluetooth connections. How many more remaining to wait until the appearance of truly destructive viruses for mobile devices will show time.
- http://www.viruslist.com/en - viral encyclopedia, a description of all viruses. News and analytical reviews.
- http://vx.netlux.org - magazines, articles about viruses. Source codes and manuals.
Dmitry Moroz
In contact with
The very first viruses were harmless. These were experiments - such as one of the first viruses "Creeper", which simply displayed the message "I'm A Creeper: Catch Me If You Can". Their distribution was limited to home networks (CREEPER existed on Tenex OS). It was in 1971.
Now there are millions of viruses spreading through the Internet by all sorts of ways - file distributions, e-mail, sites. When everything is connected with everything, viruses spread quickly. Protection against viruses is a profitable business.
It started pretty slow and much earlier than it could be assumed. The first viruses spread through offline - they worked with floppy disks and were transferred to them between computers. Who invented the virus?
The first MAC virus was written as a teenage joke. The first PC virus was made to combat piracy.
Elk Cloner.
I joked over the peers, changing copies of pirated games so that they self-deal through a certain number of launches. I distributed the games, they were sitting on them, and then she suddenly stopped working and gave out some funny comment on the screen (sense of humor of nine-grader).
As a result, friends stopped letting Scrent to their floppy disks. He stopped leaving games, everyone stopped playing his toys, etc. But he did not asson. He began to study instructions and descriptions, trying to find an apple II security hole. And he came up with a way to perform the code, not triggering into floppy disks.
"I invented leave a certain trail in the OS on a working school computer. If the next user did not restart the computer from his disk, his disc was exposed to my code. "
He wrote the code on the assembler, and called him ELK CLONER. It became the fact that they were subsequently called the "virus for the boot sector." When an uninfected disk was inserted into the drive of an infected computer, he infected the disc, recording a copy of the virus to it into the boot sector. This code is automatically performed when loading. By bringing a contaminated disk to another computer, and loading from it, the man infected this computer with a copy of the virus.
The virus interfere with the computer's work slightly, and on the 50th launch, instead of launching the program, it turned out a whole poem on the screen:
ELK CLONER: Personal Program
Crawl on your discs
Will penetrate your chips
Yes, it's a clone!
Sticks like glue
Run will be corrected
Send a clone soon.
Due to the deferment of the appearance, the program could not immediately notice that improved the chances of distribution. The epidemic lasted for several weeks.
The program reached the computer of the screit teacher, accused him of penetrating him into the office. The virus picked up the relatives of the screit from Baltimore (he himself lived in Pittsburgh himself), and after many years he heard about the case of a computer infection that belonged to some sailor.
Brain.
For IBM PC there was a Brain virus. He also settled in the boot sector. He was written by brothers Basit and Amjade Faruk Alvi from Pakistan in 1986. They were 17 and 24 years old.
The brothers had a computer company Brain Computer Services, and they wrote the virus to keep track of pirated copies of their medical software. The pirated program has exhausted the RAM, slowed down the disk operation, and sometimes interfered with the data to save. According to the brothers, it did not destroy the data. The program contained the following message:
Welcome to the Dungeon 1986 Basit & Amjad (PVT) Ltd. Brain Computer Services 730 Nizab Block ALLAAMA IQBAL Town Lahore-Pakistan Phone: 430791,443248,280530. BEWARE OF THIS VIRUS ... CONTACT US FOR VACCINATION ... $ # @% [Email Protected]!!
Welcome to the dungeon ... Take care of this virus ... Contact us for treatment ...
Real contacts were indicated in the title. When someone called them for help, they could identify a pirated copy. Also, the virus calculated the number of copies made.
They found that piracy was widespread, and copies of their programs spread very far. Amzhad says that their first call came from the USA, Miami.
Brothers Alvi in \u200b\u200b2011
It was the first of the many calls from the United States. The problem was that Brain was distributed over other diskettes, and not only through copies of their program. At the University of Delaware, the epidemic of this virus even happened in 1986, and then he appeared in many other places. There was no lawsuit filed, but in the newspapers they wrote a lot. The creators even mentioned in the magazine Time Magazine in 1988.
New York Times wrote in May 1988: "Daring computer programThat this month appeared on the Providence Bulletin computers, destroyed the files of a correspondent and spread through floppy disks throughout the newspaper network. The computerists believe that this is the first case of infection of the American newspaper's computer system such a supper program, which is called a computer "virus".
Alvi brothers had to change the phones and remove contacts from late versions Virus. Sales programs they stopped in 1987. Their company has grown in the telecommunications provider and now it is the largest provider in Pakistan. It is located all at the same address.
And now - Chaos
Scrantom in 2012
Screen worked in the area information securityAnd now he is CEO BLEKKO, which is engaged in the search technology.
Although there are no disks for a long time, viruses in the boot sectors exist. Now they work with USB flash drives. Since physical media are less used to transfer data that the days of loading viruses are considered.
War with viruses moved to online. Scranty said in an interview: "It is sad that there is such a large antivirus industry. It is necessary to make more protected systems, and not organize a multimillion industry to clean the existing. "
The Alvi's scanta and brothers do not feel guilty for the fact that the hellish procession of malicious programs in the world. "Jin would get out of the bottle in any case," wrote a scant in the blog, "I was interested to be the first one who released it."
The first computer viruses, what they were, why were they created?
The most famous virus or rather file worm is considered pervading animal. It was created in 1975 for the UNIVAC 1108 computer, as the refinement of the previously created game "Animal", which was very popular at one time. The distribution of programs and files at that time was a very time-consuming occupation, since it had to record it from one magnetic tape to another. When the programmer John Volker is tired of such a long copy process, he wrote a special subprogram "Pervade". It launched into the computer's memory as an independent subprocess, I was looking for a directory for recording and in the absence of a copy of the game "Animal" recorded it there.
However, such an innovation made a disorder in the work of the program, and it began to add themselves to other executable files, it is not overwhelmed into all directories yet. The distribution of the game ceased after Univac company released in 1976 new version The operating system in which the virus game could not work.
One of the first viruses found on a regular user who could spread in foreign computers, and not in the system where it was designed is "ELK CLONER". This virus wrote in 1981 a fifteen-year-old schoolboy Richard Scranta for computers apple II.
The virus spread, infecting the DOS operating system for Apple II, through flexible magnetic discs. After launching a computer with an infected floppy disk, a copy of the ELK Cloner virus is automatically loaded into the computer's memory. The virus did not affect the operation of the computer and other programs, it could only observe disk drives. When accessing an unreleased disk or diskette, the program copied itself. So he slowly infected more and more computers. And, although the virus did not specifically harm the user, it was able to spoil discs with a non-standard DOS type, destroying the disk backup paths regarding the contents. Each 50th download "ELK Cloner" ended with the output of a short poem to the computer screen.
The first network virus is Creeper. In 1973, he infected the Arpanet military computer network, the prototype of the Internet. Virus wrote BBN employee (Bolt Beranek and Newman) Bob Thomas. This program Could independently go online through the modem and leave your copy on a remote computer. He did not fulfill any destructive actions, only when hitting the computer, displayed the inscription: "I" Mo Creeper ... Catch me if you can "(I'm crying ... Catch me if you can).
A little later, another BBN employee Ray Tomlinson developed the REAPER program, which also moved freely over the network and, if Creeper detected, deleted it.
The first viral epidemics passed in 1987-1989. By this time, many could afford to acquire relatively cheap computers IBM PC, which led to a sharp increase in the scale of infection with computer viruses. It was in 1987 that three large epidemics of computer viruses broke out at once. The virus that caused the epidemic was called Brain (also known as the Pakistani virus), was developed in Pakistan to punish local pirates carrying programs from the developer. But, unexpectedly for everyone, he spread very quickly around the world.
For reference.
Computer virus is such a malicious program that can create your copies, as well as implement your code to other programs, boot sectors of the disks, in the system memory. The virus can distribute their copies over the Internet. Viruses are created to violate the operation of the computer, delete data or their theft, blocking the work of users or disabling the hardware of the computer.
Viruses, Trojans, Wormies and other malware - this literality always grabs online. We'll figure it out what a virus is how he lives and what harms our computers.
Computer viruses: What is it?
Virus is independent programwhich is installed against the wills of the user on his computer. The virus establishes itself into the software or in the operating system, damages software, and then continues to spread through the system. The same does a human biological virus that causes diseases, hence the name.
The word "virus" is often used both by ordinary users and professionals as the designation of any malicious programs. However, the virus in a classical understanding is precisely the pest, breaking the PC, violating his normal work.
In addition to viruses existand other malicious programs. So, for example, there are Trojans - programs that allow attackers to remotely use your computer for their own purposes without your knowledge. There are worms - breeding viruses whose goal is to install yourself on how large quantity computers. SPion, advertising software and extortionable programsalso refer to the category of malware.
Viruses can harm in different ways. Viruses exist from the earliest stages computer History. When the Internet has not yet existed, the viruses fell to other computers by transferring infected files on a diskette from a computer to another computer. Now, when the data is transmitted mainly through the Internet, the virus is much easier to infected.
Computer virus can be "picked up" in different ways. For example, web pages and postal attachments can be used to directly launch the virus into the system. Often the virus is embedded in the program downloaded from the Internet, which "produces" the virus on the will after you install it.
When the virus starts, it infects a lot of files, that is, copies their own malicious codeTo exist on the computer as long as possible. Jeopardy can get like simple documents Word.So and scripts, program libraries and all other files on your computer.
What damage causes a computer virus?
Viruses can apply the most different harm. In most cases, they delete files or irreversibly damage them. If this happens to important system fileYou will not be able to run the operating system after infection.
Damage to physical equipment is also possible, but it happens quite rarely. For example, among other things, the virus can accelerate the video card, causing it overheating and leading to failure.
The simple destruction of files does not bring financial benefits for criminals, so the viruses have become uninteresting. Moreover, today there are significantly more profitable malicious programs - the same extortionists or advertising software, the so-called "advar".
How to recognize viruses?
A real virus written by a professional it does not allow the user to find out that the computer is infected. Or a user can understand it only when it is too late.
However, there are several tips:
- If your computer suddenly has become noticeably slower, it may be a sign of the presence of a virus.
- Find and remove the virus will help you antivirus scanner. There are many free software To scan a computer to viruses.
- Anti-virus software will help to prevent the penetration of the virus on the PC or.
In the following material, we will tell about the best antivirus software for the operating room windows systems And what antivirus is the most productive.
ABOUT mobile antivirus For Android you can.
It is officially believed that the term " computer virus"For the first time, a staff member of the Lehi University (USA) F. Koen in the work of" Experiments with computer viruses "in 1984 was used. It should be noted that before this report existed examples of self-reproducing mechanisms.
The foundations of the theory of self-reproducing mechanisms laid the Americans of Hungarian descent, John Von Neuman in 1951, the first publication on the creation of self-reproducing systems, is the article L. S. Penrose about self-reproducing mechanical structures.
The article was published in 1957 by the American magazine Nature. (Her spouse is the Nobel laureate in Physics R. Penrose, the Peru belongs to the famous book "Shadow of Mind", in which the author reveals the foundations of consciousness and the unconscious from the position of the physics of the micromyr). According to this article, F. J. Stahl programmed a biocibernetic model in which the creatures moved, multiplied and could mutate.
In 1961, V. A. Vysotsky, H. D. Makilroy and Robert Morris from the company Bell Telephone Laboratories (USA) invented the unusual game Darwin, in which several assembler programs called "organisms" were loaded into the computer's memory. Organisms created by one player, that is, belonging to one species, they should have destroyed representatives of another species and seize living space.
Animal, Creeper, Cookie Monster and Xerox Worm is often referred to as examples of self-reproducing programs. Deeper was not a virus, but a self-processing program. When started by remote computer A new copy of Deeper previous copy has stopped its work.
It is believed that Deeper displayed the message "I'm the Creeper ... Catch Me If You Can" - "I am a bindweight ... Catch me if you can."
Later R. Tomlinson was written protective program Reaper - "Reaper", which, like the "bindweed", moved over the network and in the case of the detection of "infection" ceased its activities.
The above examples are not computer viruses in refined form.
With the advent of the first personal computers, Apple in 1977 and the development of the network infrastructure appeared the first vandals programs, which were under the guise of useful programs They laid out on BBS, but after startup destroyed user data. BBS - Bulletin Board System - An electronic announcement board - was widespread through switched telephone networks (Cable computer networks Another was rare). Working with BBS is made using the terminal program in text mode.
At the same time, Trojan programs-vandals appear, showing their destructive essence only after time or under certain conditions.
The first known viruses are Virus 1,2,3 and ELK Cloner for Apple II PC. Both viruses are very similar in functionality and appeared independently of each other, with a small interval in time in 1981.
Elk Cloner found its presence by a message containing even a small poem:
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!
