Government computer viruses

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Things like Trojans, ransomware, and polymorphic code. These all came from early computer viruses. To understand the threat landscape of today, we need to peer back through time and look at the viruses of yesteryear. Other notable firsts—Elk Cloner was the first virus to spread via detachable storage media it wrote itself to any floppy disk inserted into the computer.

But a Scientific American article let the virus out of the lab. In the piece, author and computer scientist A. Dewdney shared the details of an exciting new computer game of his creation called Core War.

In the game, computer programs vie for control of a virtual computer. The game was essentially a battle arena where computer programmers could pit their viral creations against each other.

For two dollars Dewdney would send detailed instructions for setting up your own Core War battles within the confines of a virtual computer. What would happen if a battle program was taken out of the virtual computer and placed on a real computer system?

In a follow-up article for Scientific American, Dewdney shared a letter from two Italian readers who were inspired by their experience with Core War to create a real virus on the Apple II. The brainchild of Pakistani brothers and software engineers, Basit and Amjad Farooq, Brain acted like an early form of copyright protection, stopping people from pirating their heart monitoring software.

Other than guilt tripping victims in to paying for their pirated software, Brain had no harmful effects. BHP also has the distinction of being the first stealth virus; that is, a virus that avoids detection by hiding the changes it makes to a target system and its files. The cover image depicted viruses as cute, googly eyed cartoon insects crawling all over a desktop computer. Up to this point, computer viruses were relatively harmless. Yes, they were annoying, but not destructive.

So how did computer viruses go from nuisance threat to system destroying plague? The MacMag virus caused infected Macs to display an onscreen message on March 2, The infected Freehand was then copied and shipped to several thousand customers, making MacMag the first virus spread via legitimate commercial software product. The Morris worm knocked out more than 6, computers as it spread across the ARPANET , a government operated early version of the Internet restricted to schools and military installations.

The Morris worm was the first known use of a dictionary attack. As the name suggests, a dictionary attack involves taking a list of words and using it to try and guess the username and password combination of a target system. Robert Morris was the first person charged under the newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act , which made it illegal to mess with government and financial systems, and any computer that contributes to US commerce and communications.

In his defense, Morris never intended his namesake worm to cause so much damage. According to Morris, the worm was designed to test security flaws and estimate the size of the early Internet.

A bug caused the worm to infect targeted systems over and over again, with each subsequent infection consuming processing power until the system crashed. Victims received a 5. Joseph L. Popp, intended to draw parallels between his digital creation and the deadly AIDS virus. In an era before Bitcoin and other untraceable cryptocurrencies, victims had to send ransom funds to a PO box in Panama in order to receive the decryption software and regain access to their files.

There were 2. By the end of the decade, that number would surpass million. Traditional AV works by comparing the files on your computer with a giant list of known viruses. Every virus on the list is made of computer code and every snippet of code has a unique signature—like a fingerprint.

If a snippet of code found on your computer matches that of a known virus in the database, the file is flagged. While each copy of the virus looked and acted the same, the underlying code was different. This is called polymorphic code, making the first polymorphic virus.

Melissa was a macro virus. Viruses of this type hide within the macro language commonly used in Microsoft Office files. Opening up a viral Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, etc. Melissa was the fastest spreading virus up to that point, infecting approximately , computers, Medium reported. Viruses paved the way for a whole new generation of destructive malware.

Cryptojackers stealthily used our computers to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Ransomware held our computers hostage. Banking Trojans, like Emotet , stole our financial information. Other defenses involve monitoring changes in program length.

The checksum method may be the most effective way to detect viruses, say some experts. But they note that ingenious ways can be devised to get around most defenses. Bluntly put, the integrity of computer systems depends on the integrity of human beings. As Mr. Creating and detecting effective viruses has expanded into a new realm of fascination challenge for computer security experts. Computer security for government. Some computer security experts, including Harold Highland, say that the federal government should be focusing more attention on the threat which computer viruses could pose to national security.

But government agencies are not ignoring the issue. While the NSA safeguards classified information, the National Bureau of Standards is responsible for developing guidelines on computer security.

All agencies, however, are responsible for setting their own computer security policies. A computer virus is a program that spreads by secretly attaching copies of itself to other programs. Viruses interfere with a computer's operations, often deleting or altering files. Typically, the virus will infiltrate a computer's basic software that runs other programs.

Thus any program that is executed may be exposed to the virus. Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

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