In 1969, there were four hosts on the Internet. In 2005, that number has exceeded 300 million.
It is not surprising that the evolution of computer viruses is
directly related to the success and evolution of the Internet,
and the comparison between the Internet and a living body
that is continuously fighting viral infection and disease is
both easy to understand and picture. As the Internet has
assumed a life of its own, connecting computers, servers,
laptops, and mobile phones around the world into a single,
evolving web of inter connectivity, so, too, has malicious
code quickly evolved and mutated to become a myriad of
increasingly more complex malicious software programs.
Simply put, anti-virus is the antidote to this infection.
As the Internet has evolved, so has the nature of the threat.
Viruses have spawned new forms of malicious life that
thrive upon the computational technology of Internet
connectivity, data, and voice communications. These
new threats can rapidly recreate themselves (worms) to
attack their hosts, and then spread rapidly from one host to
another. Recently, independent threats have combined in
the form of blended threats that conspire to identify, disable,
or destroy any vulnerable carrier hosts.
So where did this all start?
Brain (1986) was one of the earliest viruses. It infected
the boot sector of fl oppy disks, which were the principal
method of transmitting fi les of data from one computer to
another. This virus was written in machine code, the basic
computing language for personal computers (PCs). Virus
propagation was slow and depended upon users physically
carrying the infection from one machine to another, and
then transmitting the infection via the fl oppy disk when the
PC booted up. These viruses became know as boot sector
viruses because the upload executed the virus process. By
the early 1990s, well-known viruses like Stoned, Jerusalem,
and Cascade began to circulate.
The first major mutation of viruses took place in July 1995.
This was when the fi rst macro virus was developed. It
was notably different from boot sector viruses because it
was written in a readable format. The use of such macro
programming within common offi ce applications resulted
in the Concept virus. Viruses written in readable format,
combined with the existence of macro programming
manuals and the enhanced capabilities of macro viruses
relative to boot sector and contemporary fi le viruses,
allowed new macro viruses and variants of existing viruses
to be rapidly developed and distributed. Furthermore, with
computers now being connected to local area networks
(LANs) that were slowly being interconnected to each other,
the increased importance and feasibility of fi le sharing
provided an effi cient distribution mechanism for viruses,
which further attracted more writers to this new breed of
malicious code.
The next major mutation of viruses took place in 1999
when a macro-virus author turned his attention to the use
of e-mail as a distribution mechanism. Melissa, the fi rst
infamous global virus, was born. After Melissa, viruses
were no longer solely reliant on fi le sharing by fl oppy disk,
network shared fi les, or e-mail attachments. Viruses had
the capability to propagate through e-mail clients such as
Outlook and Outlook Express. As of a result of this and new
developments in the capabilities of the Windows® Scripting
Host, a devastating virus known as Love Letter was spawned
on May 4, 2000. The world has never been the same since.
Evolving, mutating, and growing in intelligence and its
ability to survive and spread its infection, the virus has
jumped from the humble fl oppy disk to distributing itself
quickly around the internal network. The virus is presently
capable of spreading seemingly unseen, effortlessly and
unstoppably across the global Internet, infecting anything
and everything it touches.
As antidotes to viruses were developed and immunization
programs created and deployed to counteract their effect,
some viruses were able to adapt and learn to circumnavigate
the efforts made to stop them, and new malicious organisms
rapidly came into existence. Today we not only have to cope
with viruses, but also with worms, Trojan horses, backdoors,
rootkits, HTTP exploits, privilege escalation exploits, and
buffer overfl ow exploits. These new threats identify and prey
upon vulnerabilities in applications and software programs
to transmit and spread attacks.
In 2002, these threats began to combine, and the blended
threat was born. By utilizing multiple techniques, blended
threats can spread far quicker than conventional threats.
And the devastation they can wreak can be far more
widespread and destructive.
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