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2 Computer Viruses, Malicious Logic, and Spyware
the BSD OS, widely used at the time. Thus, the Morris worm became the first
“network worm” to successfully spread in the wild.
After this, the problem of viruses acquired a global nature.
Let us give a brief chronology of events. 1990—the first so-called polymorphic
virus with the corresponding name—”Chameleon”.
1992—another virus called “Michelangelo” generated a wave of publications in
the Western media predicting the catastrophe on March 6. The virus was expected
to damage information on millions of computers, but its effects, fortunately, turned
out to be minimal. On the positive side of the wave of publications, not only the
intelligence services of developed countries, but also the academic community finally
got interested in the problem—scientific research began in this field.
This year is also known as the year of the appearance of the first “designers”
of viruses, as well as ready-made polymorphic modules and the first encryption
modules. From this point on, programmers were able to easily add encryption features
to their viruses.
During this initial period of malware development, joke viruses, which simply
interfered with the work of users, were quite popular. There were few if any destructive ones among them. For example, such programs required additional memory
(“cookie,” etc.), and the screen was blocked until the user entered the desired word
from the keyboard (sometimes, it was to be guessed). Or, for example, a virus that
displayed a message like: “Press simultaneously L + A + M + E + R + F1 + Alt.”
The user clicked, after which a message appeared that the partition table was erased
from the hard disk and loaded into RAM, and if the user releases at least one key
now, he can say goodbye forever to his information, and if he’s been on for exactly
an hour, everything will be OK. For those users who fulfilled these conditions, an
hour later it turned out that it was a joke.
Further mass distribution of personal computers led to the emergence of people
who were no longer interested in the process of creating a virus, but in the result of
a malicious program. And “jokes” also changed: viruses actually began to format
disks, erase, or encode important information. Some applications used the shortages
of equipment and spoiled it, for example, lined up the monitor beams at one point,
burning it (device reliability at the time left much to be desired), or knocked out hard
drives, making the read head run by one specific algorithm.
Since about 1995, a new trend has emerged in the world of viruses: in most cases
they do not destroy data, but try to steal or change. For example, the popularity of
online games has led to the emergence of viruses that specialize in stealing passwords
to player accounts, since virtual values earned in a game could have been already
sold for real money.
By the beginning of 2000, more than 10,000 different software viruses were
already known, but in subsequent years their growth has decreased due to the
emergence of other more insidious threats.
2 Computer Viruses, Malicious Logic, and Spyware
the BSD OS, widely used at the time. Thus, the Morris worm became the first
“network worm” to successfully spread in the wild.
After this, the problem of viruses acquired a global nature.
Let us give a brief chronology of events. 1990—the first so-called polymorphic
virus with the corresponding name—”Chameleon”.
1992—another virus called “Michelangelo” generated a wave of publications in
the Western media predicting the catastrophe on March 6. The virus was expected
to damage information on millions of computers, but its effects, fortunately, turned
out to be minimal. On the positive side of the wave of publications, not only the
intelligence services of developed countries, but also the academic community finally
got interested in the problem—scientific research began in this field.
This year is also known as the year of the appearance of the first “designers”
of viruses, as well as ready-made polymorphic modules and the first encryption
modules. From this point on, programmers were able to easily add encryption features
to their viruses.
During this initial period of malware development, joke viruses, which simply
interfered with the work of users, were quite popular. There were few if any destructive ones among them. For example, such programs required additional memory
(“cookie,” etc.), and the screen was blocked until the user entered the desired word
from the keyboard (sometimes, it was to be guessed). Or, for example, a virus that
displayed a message like: “Press simultaneously L + A + M + E + R + F1 + Alt.”
The user clicked, after which a message appeared that the partition table was erased
from the hard disk and loaded into RAM, and if the user releases at least one key
now, he can say goodbye forever to his information, and if he’s been on for exactly
an hour, everything will be OK. For those users who fulfilled these conditions, an
hour later it turned out that it was a joke.
Further mass distribution of personal computers led to the emergence of people
who were no longer interested in the process of creating a virus, but in the result of
a malicious program. And “jokes” also changed: viruses actually began to format
disks, erase, or encode important information. Some applications used the shortages
of equipment and spoiled it, for example, lined up the monitor beams at one point,
burning it (device reliability at the time left much to be desired), or knocked out hard
drives, making the read head run by one specific algorithm.
Since about 1995, a new trend has emerged in the world of viruses: in most cases
they do not destroy data, but try to steal or change. For example, the popularity of
online games has led to the emergence of viruses that specialize in stealing passwords
to player accounts, since virtual values earned in a game could have been already
sold for real money.
By the beginning of 2000, more than 10,000 different software viruses were
already known, but in subsequent years their growth has decreased due to the
emergence of other more insidious threats.