Computer viruses and their history

The version Walker created was in high demand, and sending it to his friends meant making and transmitting magnetic tapes. Brain, the first PC virus, began infecting 5. As Securelist reports, it was the work of two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who ran a computer store in Pakistan. Tired of customers making illegal copies of their software, they developed Brain, which replaced the boot sector of a floppy disk with a virus.

The virus, which was also the first stealth virus, contained a hidden copyright message, but did not actually corrupt any data. The introduction of reliable, speedy broadband networks early in the 21st century changed the way malware was transmitted.

No longer confined to floppy disks or company networks, malware was now able to spread very quickly via email, via popular websites or even directly over the Internet. As a result, modern malware began to take shape.

The threat landscape became a mixed environment shared by viruses, worms and Trojans—hence the name "malware" as an umbrella term for malicious software.

One of the most serious epidemics of this new era was the LoveLetter, which appeared on May 4, As Securelist notes, it followed the pattern of earlier email viruses of the time, but unlike the macro viruses that had dominated the threat landscape since , it didn't take the form of an infected Word document, but arrived as a VBS file. It was simple and straightforward, and since users hadn't learned to be suspicious of unsolicited emails, it worked. The WanaCry is the first ransomware on our list.

It takes over your computer or cloud files , encrypts them to make them unavailable to you. Then it asks for you to pay a ransom hence, the name to receive the decryptor to unlock your data. WanaCry arrived at the computers of countries in a single day. It hit all kinds of organization s hospitals, governmental offices, private businesses , causing massive disruption. Fortunately, Marcus Hutchins , a year-old security expert in the UK, eventually found a way to neutralize WannaCry.

The WannaCry episode illustrated how the most outdated operating systems are vulnerable to attacks. That is why updating your system is a standard security practice.

The Zeuz theft tool hit the web for the first time in It was more like a suite , and it included several programs that composed the global Zeus botnet. Zeuz arose from Eastern Europe and transferred money into secret bank accounts. There was no single, lonely, poor programmer behind Zeuz. Instead, it had an entire organization supporting and profiting from it. In , more than members of the virus crime ring were arrested. Zeuz is not as prominent at present, but it spawned a new generation of malware as other developers used pieces of the Zeuz code to integrate into their own, more recent, worms and viruses.

Zeuz-related documented damage ascended to million USD. The costs in terms of lost productivity, morale, and undocumented theft must be several times higher. If we estimate all that damage and adjust for inflation, Zeuz costs at least about 4 billion USD while active. Unfortunately, it left no trace in the hardware like files on a hard drive , which complicated the forensic analysis. Slammer would select an IP address at random and explore the security vulnerabilities in the target system.

If it found the target environment feasible for the attack, it would replicate to the target system. Once it had a good number of infected computers ready, it launched DDoS attacks on some selected internet servers, thus ruining their traffic. Banking computers in the US and Canada had the worse experience with Slammer.

The worm even forced ATMs to go offline in multiple places. No definitive solution was ever found to prevent SQP Slammer infections. In fact, saw the attack surface again from computers located in Mexico, China, and Ukraine. The estimated number of systems with a CryptoLocker infection is about a quarter million.

It seems you can write excellent and effective code without mastering English. This message comes along a payment demand, leaving no doubts about what to do next: you pay for the privilege of deciphering your very own files, or you lose all control over your system.

CryptoLocker used the Gameover Zeus botnet to distribute and install millions of CryptoLocker copies in vulnerable systems. Sophos Security estimates the cost of average ransomware hit at , USD.

If we estimate additionally that CryptoLocker successfully attacked some corporations, the total cost would have been around million USD, give or take a lot.

Sven Jaschan was a computer science student in Germany, 17 years old. By the time he got arrested in , he was already of age. There was a , bounty on his head , as the creator of Sasser. However, one of his friends blew the whistle on him. Instead, he also created the Netsky. The legal system gave Mr. Jaschan a suspended sentence when it became clear that he was a minor as he was writing the code. Sasser crashed millions of computers globally, and with an apparently low infection rate, it incurred damages of around million USD.

Melissa is a name in Greek mythology, and it refers to the first honey bee. But in , there was also a Florida exotic dancer called Melissa who caught the attention of David L.

Smith, the author of the eponymous computer virus. This one started as an infected Word document that the author posted to the Usenet. He persuaded thousands of Usenet lurkers to download it, claiming it was a list of working passwords for adult websites.

A good anti-malware program is like having a healthy immune system. The free version of Malwarebytes is a good place to start if you know or suspect your computer has a virus. Available for Windows and Mac, the free version of Malwarebytes will scan for malware infections and clean them up after the fact. Get a free premium trial of Malwarebytes for Windows or Malwarebytes for Mac to stop infections before they start. You can also try our Android and iOS apps free to protect your smartphones and tablets.

All the tactics and techniques employed by cybercriminals creating modern malware were first seen in early viruses. 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. At the time, "animal programs," which try to guess which animal the user is thinking of with a game of 20 questions, were extremely popular.

The version Walker created was in high demand, and sending it to his friends meant making and transmitting magnetic tapes. Brain, the first PC virus, began infecting 5. As Securelist reports, it was the work of two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who ran a computer store in Pakistan. Tired of customers making illegal copies of their software, they developed Brain, which replaced the boot sector of a floppy disk with a virus.

The virus, which was also the first stealth virus, contained a hidden copyright message, but did not actually corrupt any data. The introduction of reliable, speedy broadband networks early in the 21st century changed the way malware was transmitted. No longer confined to floppy disks or company networks, malware was now able to spread very quickly via email, via popular websites or even directly over the Internet. As a result, modern malware began to take shape.