Why Computer Viruses?
Greetings of the day, noble steemians! What a beautiful weather over here! just sitting in front of my system and doing normal technical routine, a thought of life and its circumstances followed by the question of why do we have viruses just came to my mind, though, a thought followed immediately, ‘could the reason be that virus was introduced in order to make money from the users by developing and selling to them an anti-virus’, I then remember a question being asked when Ebola was introduced to the country sometimes ago
Can it be true that 'The Ebola virus' has been spread to make a profit from its antivirus?
another question of how can this be true followed immediately and this led to my research on this topic.
Computer Virus (Theory of Self-Replicating Automata)
Research into the history of computing revealed that the computer programs developed by people over the past six decades and above, had the ability to replicate itself just as the known flu and the common cold replicate in human bodies. Though it seemed like amazing modern programs that were wise beyond their years in the beginning and these programs have transformed into today’s widely known computer viruses.
The Creeper Program(1971)
What was often regarded as the first virus was a self-replicating program called “The Creeper” created in 1971 by Bob Thomas of BBN Technologies and is called ‘the Creeper program’, Creeper had no malicious intent in the beginning and only displayed a message on the screen "I'M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!" it was developed to check if self-replicating program was possible since John von Neumann who was given the title “Father of Cybernetics” wrote an article on the “Theory of Self- Reproducing Automata”. Self-Reproducing Automata sounds much more interesting than “Virus” though. Soon after the creation of The creeper, another program called “The Reaper” was created to kill the delete the harmful “Creeper”.
The Wabbit Virus (1974)
The Rabbit (or Wabbit) virus was created in 1974 in order to replicate multiple copies of itself on a single computer and it was named "Rabbit" due to its speed at which it did so. It reduces system performance severely, clogs the system before finally reaching a threshold and eventually crashing computer machine.
The First Trojan (1975)
An ANIMAL written by John Walker for the Universal Automatic Computer I (UNIVAC 1108) in 1975, in which a number of questions was asked from the user in an attempt to guess the kind of animal that the user likes or thinking in their mind, in the cause of doing that, the related program pervade would replicate a copy of itself and ANIMAL in all directory to which the current user had access. Despite this replication, there was nothing like malicious intent but an ANIMAL and PERVADE definitely fit the definition of a Trojan: Hiding inside ANIMAL was indeed another program that performs actions without the users awareness. Although there still exist some debate as to whether this was a Trojan or another virus.
----------------------------80's--------------------------------------------- This was the decade when the popularly known term “VIRUS” was first coined and used, also the decade we began to see these programs turn more malicious.
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Fred Cohen (1983 )
Fred Cohen was the first to get the world thinking about cyber security in 1983, when he experimented and showed the effectivity of a virus he developed by himself. It was during a security seminar at the Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, USA, when Cohen entered a small piece of code into a UNIX command and advocated the importance of cyber security by successfully showing how his virus could completely maneuver a computers system in under an hour.
The Brain Boot Sector Virus (1986)
This can be regarded as the first Personal Computer (PC) virus; it began infecting 5.2floppy disks in 1986. It was reported by ‘Securelist reports’ to be the work of two brothers named Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who both ran a computer store in Pakistan. They developed the program when they got tired of customers making illegal duplicates of their program software; they then developed Brain Boot Sector Virus which capable to replace the boot sector of a floppy disk with a virus. It was known to contained a hidden copyright message, though, it did not actually corrupt any data.
The LoveLetter Virus(2000)
This has been regarded as one of the most serious epidemics of this decade. LoveLetter was creator by Onel de Guzman and appeared on May 4, 2000. The advancement of technology in the 21st century changed the way malware was transmitted, the invention of reliability, speedy broadband networks early made virus no longer restricted to ordinary floppy-disks, virus was then able to spread viral so quick through email, popular websites or even directly over the Internet. This development made modern malware began to take shape.
"LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU-TXT.vbs" was designed to overwrite existing files and replace it with copies of itself, it was through this it spread the worm to all the victims via email contacts. Based on the way it works, i.e via someone familiar, people were more likely to open it, thereby making ‘I LOVEYOU’ a proof of concept for the social engineering.
The Code Red Virus (2001)
This worm was a "file less" worm, which only existed in memory and made no significant attempt to infect files on computer system. It usually takes advantage of a flaw in the Microsoft Internet Information Server (MIIS), The Code Red Virus was regarded as the fast replicating worm wreaked havoc by manipulating the Internet protocols (IP) that given computers an access to communicate and spread globally in just hours.
Heartbleed (2014)
This is regarded as one of the most recent viruses, it came out in 2014, Heartbleed used to burst onto the scene and put network servers across the Internet at greater threat. It was known for its serious vulnerability in the well-known and popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. The Heartbleed’s weakness allows the information protected to be stealing.
CONCLUSSION
Based on the history and revolution of computer viruses discussed above, it has been revealed that for more than 50 years ago, computer viruses have been part and parcel of human consciousness, though, what was once simply a research and cyber vandalism has turned quickly to cybercrime. Series of Worms, Trojans and viruses are evolving and difficult to stop rather different types of anti-virus are also continuously evolving.
References
1. The very first viruses: Creeper, Wabbit and Brain.
2. Divya && G. Sachdeva (2015). COMPUTER SECURITY- A REVIEW. IJARIIE-ISSN(O)-2395-4396
3. A Brief History of Computer Viruses & What the Future Holds
4. Why Heartbleed is the most dangerous security flaw on the web
5. The Humble Computer Virus
6. A Brief History of the Computer Virus
7. Something wicked: The 10 scariest computer viruses of all time
8. THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER VIRUSES
*All images are from free source websites
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Thanks for reading through, your thoughts are important.
Until my next post,
keep on sending zeroes and ones.
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So basically, computer viruses were and are still being developed in order to rake-in money for the developers in form of antivirus sales. It's quite scary the extent at which capital accumulators can go in order of achieve their goals. Same thing goes for weapon manufacturers. How can there be peace in the world when large corporations invest heavily in manufacturing arms? Are those arms suppose to be for hunting or humans?
It was initially developed to check if self-replicating program was possible since John von Neumann proposed the idea by writing an article on the “Theory of Self- Reproducing Automata” in 1966, unfortunately, what was once simply a research and cyber vandalism later turned to cybercrime and opened way for capital accumulators. Thanks for coming around.