History Of The Virus
In 1949 John von Neumann proved mathematically the possibility of constructing a computer program that can replicate itself. The concept of self-replicating program found its practical evolution in the early 60’s in the game, created by a group of programmers at Bell Laboratories of AT & T called “Core Wars”, in which more programs are needed to defeat overwrite each other. It was the beginning of the history of computer viruses.
The term “virus” was first used by Fred Cohen (1984) University of Southern California in his paper Experiments with Computer Viruses (experiments with computer viruses), where he pointed to Leonard Adleman as the one who coined that term. The definition of virus, was as follows: “A computer virus is a program that recursively and explicitly copies a possibly evolved version of itself.”
In 1972 David Gerrold wrote a science fiction novel The God Machine (When HARLE was One), where there is a description of a computer program called “virus” that does exactly the same things as a virus. John Brunner’s 1975 novel, wrote the code 4GH (The Shockwave Rider) that describes programs called “tapeworms” which infiltrate the network in order to erase all data. In 1973 the phrase “computer virus” was used in the film Westworld (Westworld). The term “computer virus” with the usual meaning is also involved in the ‘comic book “Uncanny X-Men” No. 158, published in 1982. It can therefore be said that Cohen had first use of the word virus only in the academic field, since this was already present in the spoken language.
A program called “Elk Clones” is credited as the first computer virus appeared in the world. It was created in 1982 by Rich Skrenta on the Apple DOS 3.3 and the infection was spread through the exchange of floppy disks. During the eighties and early nineties was the exchange of floppy the dominant mode of infection by computer viruses. Since the mid-nineties, however, with the spread of internet viruses and malware in general began to spread much more quickly, using the networking and the exchange of e-mail as a source for new infections. The favorite targets of these programs are mostly different versions of Windows.
The first computer virus known in the world was created in 1986 by two Pakistani brothers, owners of a computer store to punish those who illegally copying their software. The virus called Brain, spread throughout the world, and was the first example of viruses that infect the boot sector.
The first file infector appeared in 1987. His name Lehigh and only the infected file Command.com. Robert Morris Jr. in 1988 created the first worm in history. The following year, in 1989, there emerged the first polymorphic virus, with one of the most famous Vienna, and was released on AIDS trojan (a.k.a., Cyborg), very similar to modern-day trojan called PGPCoder. Both encode the data because the hard drive and then ask the user for a ransom to retrieve everything.
In 1995, the first macro virus, viruses written in the scripting language of Microsoft programs such as MS-Word and Outlook that infect primarily the various versions of Microsoft programs through the exchange of documents. Concept was the first macro virus history. In 1998, the birth of another virus history, Chernobyl or CIH, famous for overwriting the BIOS of the motherboard and hard drive partition table is infected every 26 month.
The mainstreaming of the Internet in the late 90s leads to modification of the techniques of viral spread: no more floppy but worms that spread via e-mail. Among the most prominent worm before 2000: Melissa and Happy99 Bubbleboy, the first worm that can exploit a flaw in Internet Explorer and Outlook Express by themselves without opening the attachment.
In 2000 the famous I Love You that starts the period of the script virus, the most insidious of the viruses spread through e-mail because exploiting the possibilities offered by programs like Outlook and Outlook Express to run active statements (called script), contained in e-mail mail written in HTML to perform potentially dangerous actions on the recipient’s computer.
Viruses made scripts are the most dangerous because they can activate themselves when the message is opened for reading. I Love You spread via email in millions of computers around the world, so that the arrest of its creator, a guy from the Philippines, had to intervene a special squad of the FBI. It was an e-mail message containing a small program that instructs the computer to postpone the newly arrived message to all the addresses in the phonebook of the victim, thus creating a kind of chain letter sent automatically at the end crashed mail server.
Since 2001, an increase of worms that spread to take advantage of flaws in programs or operating systems without user intervention. The peak in 2003 and 2004: SQL / Slammer, the fastest worm in history – in fifteen minutes after the first attack Slammer had already infected half of the servers that held up internet knocked the ATMs of Bank of America, turning off the 911 emergency service in Seattle and causing the cancellation still unexplained errors in services, ticketing and check-in, and the two most famous worm in history: Blaster and Sasser.
Any operating system that allows the execution of programs written by third system is a potential virus attack, but we must also recognize that there are operating systems less secure than others. Microsoft’s operating systems are most affected by the virus (also because of their distribution to an audience of ‘non-experts’), but there are also experimental viruses for other platforms. Systems based on the GNU project (GNU / Linux, GNU / Hurd, BSD, etc.) and on Mac OS X in the spread of a virus is very unlikely if the system is managed properly by the owner, also a virus on these systems can hardly fail to cause damage to the operating system.
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