History of Computer Virus

Doing work of writing a software, why anyone would care trashing a stranger’s system? To understand why people write these Malicious Codes, we need to get into who are behind this.

The Term ‘VIRUS’

VIRUS stands for Vital Information Resources Under Seize.

Malicious piece of code written by an individual to perform an unethical task is a Computer Virus. It has the potential for unexpected programs to run in background, stealing information and sending it to a person sitting on other side of the network, corrupts and destroys the data.

A virus file requires victim to perform an action to activate, infect and spread from one system to another.

Suppose, a person downloaded a movie from torrent which comes downloaded (unknowingly) with a virus. Executes that downloaded file, activates the virus. He copied the movie on his pen-drive and took it to a friend who has asked the movie from him. Now, it infected his friend’s system too.

How and Why VIRUS Exists ?

Mostly, teens of school and college create them to become famous or accepting challenges from friends.

In 1982, Richard Skrenta created Elk Cloner when he was 15 years old to prank his friends.

In 2005, Sven Jaschan created Netsky (a worm) when he was 18 years old.

Evolution of generation has pushed each one of us more to take interest in other people’s network. Breaking into digital property and to steal information from others is approaching a trend.

History of Computer Virus

Present generation needs more of cyber-criminals of yesterday. The scripts and algorithms are still taken from early viruses. Viruses like Trojans and Worms are still into active state originated from early computer viruses.

To understand how this pool of pranks lead towards destruction, we need to throw some light starting from 40’s.

Von Neumann Cellular Automata (1949)

John Von Neumann introduced a theory on “Self Re-producing Machines” which seems to be like a Sci-fi movies in those days of computing. To define its work in more detail, Von Neumann invented the concept of Cellular Automaton.

Elk Cloner (1982)

Richard Skrentra pranked his friends by creating Elk Cloner and putting it on a game disk. He was 15 years old. It targeted Apple II computers causing infected machines to display a poem from Skrentra.

Elk Cloner is the first self-spreading computer virus ever created which proved Von Neumann’s theory into reality.

Computer Virus (1984)

The term “Computer Virus” by Fred Cohen, described it as “complicated self-reproducing automata”. Von Neumann Cellular Automata is now no more a theory.

Cohen also defined it as “a program that can ‘infect’ other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself.”

Core Wars (1984)

Core Wars was a battle arena game where computer programmers programs their battle program called warriors and fight against each other to take control of a virtual computer.

This inspired 2 Italian programmers who created a real virus out of this game, infected Apple II computers to take control of them.

First PC Virus “BRAIN” (1986)

BRAIN was created to prevent the use of pirated copy of a software.

Created by 2 Pakistani software engineers namely Amjad Farooq and Basit Farooq to prevent the use of its pirated copy of its Heart Monitoring System and traps the victim to pay for its pirated copy.

If anyone with pirated version of the software, the person will receive an on-screen message “WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON . . . CONTACT US FOR VACCINATION” along with their names, and contact details.

BRAIN has no harmful effects except trapping the victim, paying for the pirated software.

Basit addressed BRAIN as a “very friendly virus.”, Amjad added that today’s viruses, the descendant from BRAIN are “a purely criminal act.”

Viruses go into Stealth Mode (1986)

BHP was the first virus to run into stealth mode. It attacked the first computer Commodore 64, infected the machine which displayed a text message with name of some hackers who created the virus.

BHP hides itself by making changes to the files and prevents it from being detected.

Computer Virus on cover Magazine (1988)

The story of Computer Virus was published on cover of September TIME magazine.

A Message of Peace goes haywire (1988)

“Viruses were all about peace and love — until they started crashing people’s computers.”

MacMag Virus (1988)

Viruses were all about peace and love — until they started crashing people’s computers.

The infected Macs by MacMag Virus displayed an on-screen message on March 2, 1988:

“RICHARD BRANDOW, publisher of MacMag, and its entire staff would like to take this opportunity to convey their UNIVERSAL MESSAGE OF PEACE to all Macintosh users around the world.”

Things turned to be nightmare until the defective code in MacMag Virus caused a bug and started to crash infected Macs before Brandow’s day of Universal Peace.

MacMag also capable of deleting itself after displaying the Brandow’s message but things are more destructive when it also ends up deleting other user files.

Drew Davidson said, “I just thought we’d release it and it would be kind of neat.”

Drew Davidson is the author of MacMag Virus, not Brandow. He told TIME that his intention towards MacMag Virus was just to draw attention to his programming skills.

Morris Worm (1988)

Another virus made to the front page of The New York Times, “most serious computer ‘virus’ attack” appeared in the US history. At that time, it was referred as a ‘virus’ because no one knew what a worm was.

Robert Morris created internet worm, which spread across ARPANET, crashed more than 6000 computers. It was the first virus to use dictionary attack.

Robert Morris designed the worm in order to test security flaws and to measure the size of the early Internet. A bug caused the worm to infect systems over and over again, with each subsequent infection consuming system resources until crashing.

Robert Morris was the first person charged with newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is illegal to mess with government and financial systems, and any computer that comes under US commerce and communications.

AIDS Trojan (1989)

Victim receives a 5.25-inch floppy labelled “AIDS Information”. The floppy contains simple questions to let people figure out themselves if they are infected with AIDS (the biological disease) or not.

The AIDS Trojan will stay dormant on an infected system for the next 89 start ups. On 90th start up, an on-screen message from “PC Cyborg Corporation”, encrypts the files on system and demands a payment for “your software lease”, similar to the ransomware of today’s generation.

The payment amount needs to be sent to a Post Office box in Panama to receive the decryption software and enable re-access to files.

As per the report, around 20,000 of disk recipients were the authorized of WHO (World Health Organization) who previously rejected Dr. Joseph L. Popp for an AIDS research position. He claimed after his arrest.

Internet became public (1990)

ARPANET was taken down and commercially introduced as INTERNET for public use.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW) and integrated the use of web browsers and web pages. Internet became a user friendly place where one can explore without having special technical knowledge.

Rise of Internet enabled new path for viruses to spread through networks.

First Polymorphic Virus, the 1260 Virus (1990)

Traditional Anti-Virus software works by matching the file against their giant list of known viruses database. Every snippet of Virus code contents an unique signature. The file is flagged as infected if the signature in their database matches with the signature of file on your computer.

1260 Virus constantly changes its signature every time it replicates across a system to avoid detection. Each copy having same function with different underlying code. This is called polymorphic code.

Cybersecurity Researcher Mark Washburn created 1260 virus to prove the limitations in traditional Anti-virus software.

Melissa Virus (1999)

Melissa Virus is a macro virus.

It hides within the macro language commonly used in Office files. Executing a infected Word DOC, Excel SPREADSHEET, etc. activates the virus.

Melissa was the fastest spreading virus, infected around 2,50,000 computers.

Shamoon Virus (2012)

Reported by The New York Times, Shamoon Virus caused one of the most destructive attacks, knocking out three-quarters of Aramco’s Systems (Saudi Arabian Oil Company).

Shamoon infected computers and networks belongs to Aramco as a response to Saudi government policy decisions.

According to Cybersecurity Researchers, the attack initiated through an infected external storage device (USB).

Technical Scammers (Present Generation)

Evolution of Internet has elevated awareness programs, publishing article on blogs has provided us the basic necessities to stay away at safe distance from downloading viruses.

Technical Scammers referred to as a Virus Hoax in Modern World which isn’t actually a Virus. It is a kind of Adware that fools and traps victim with original software brand, logos which looks legit. Some redirect you to scammer sites. Many of them looks like a Warning generated by your Operating System with perfect UI as of your OS.

There’s no virus and no technical support — just scammers who traps and demands payment to “fix” it.

How do I keep my PC safe from Viruses ?

Having an Antivirus is not a complete protection to prevent you from Virus attacks. Situation matters that we should be aware of.

Here are some of the points to keep yourself aware :

• Opening an email attachment from unknown source.
• Using a pirated copy of cracked software.
• Purchasing a software from third party in search of discounts.
• Downloading and installing a software from an unknown/untrusted source.
• Check the email address of the source.
• Keep an eye on spellings. Sometimes, ‘google’ appears ‘g00gle’.

Situation is not only limited to this but there are more like :

• Avoid visiting website or a link leads to an untrusted source.
• Stop getting fooled by ads that looks to good to be true.
• Check for any site redirection.
• downloading without your knowledge.
• Warning Messages or Emails that looks legit.
• Clicking on links that looks like system generated warning (trending one).

Steps to remove Computer Viruses

A good Anti-virus software should be present on your system. Regular scan will get rid of unwanted programs.

Slowing down of System because of unknown programs and processes that runs on the background and consume resources. Keep an eye on CPU usage if your system is freezing. Locate the file under processes tab in Task Manager that results in high CPU usage and stop that process.

Not all processes that results in high CPU usage is a Virus. Sometimes, some OS processes do require system resources which results in high CPU usage for certain span of 5–6 minutes or couple of minutes.

Keep the Firewall active and keep the Operating System updated to patch security flaws.