Story computer virus




















What is a computer virus? This idea was first discussed in a series of lectures by mathematician John von Neumann in the late s and a paper published in , Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. The paper was effectively a thought experiment that speculated that it would be possible for a "mechanical" organism—such as a piece of computer code—to damage machines, copy itself and infect new hosts, just like a biological virus. Creeper was actually designed as a security test to see if a self-replicating program was possible.

It was—sort of. With each new hard drive infected, Creeper would try to remove itself from the previous host. According to InfoCarnivore , the Rabbit or Wabbit virus was developed in , did have malicious intent and was able to duplicate itself. Once on a computer, it made multiple copies of itself, severely reducing system performance and eventually crashing the machine.

The speed of replication gave the virus its name. 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.

You know in heist movies when the bad guy grabs someone and threatens them in return for money? Ransomware works much like that, except your computer is taken hostage by a faceless bad guy. The hackers then sent a decryption key in return for a sum of money , usually somewhere from a few hundred pounds up to a couple of grand. With some of the hacking attempts, System Restore or recovery software worked.

Now is a good time to remind you to always back your files up! Well, in malware was a bit of a myth. In fact, it was such a myth that malware could get away with being completely unsubtle. We hope! ILOVEYOU hit headlines around the world and still people clicked on the text—maybe to test if it really was as bad as it was supposed to be.

Poking the bear with a stick, to use a metaphor. A viral virus, by all accounts. Two young Filipino programmers, Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman, were named as the perps but because there were no laws against writing malware, their case was dropped and they went free. MyDoom is considered to be the most damaging virus ever released—and with a name like MyDoom would you expect anything less?

A version of the virus allegedly hit the SCO website with a boatload of traffic in an attempt to crash its servers. Who was Andy? Who knows. Storm Worm was a Trojan horse that infected computers, sometimes turning them into zombies or bots to continue the spread of the virus and to send a huge amount of spam mail.

By July , Storm Worm was picked up in more than million emails. Sasser spread through infected computers by scanning random IP addresses and instructing them to download the virus. Netsky was the more familiar email-based worm. Netsky was actually the more viral virus, and caused a huge amount of problems in A German student, Jaschan was arrested when multiple tip-offs were reported to the police. Because he was under 18 when he wrote the virus, Jaschan spent his prison sentence on probation.

MyDoom was spreading rapidly at the time and Jaschan, a newbie coder, wanted to see what would happen if his bug could spread faster than MyDoom. Things quickly escalated from there. In fact, just about anyone can distribute a virus if they possess a copy and a little know-how.

Of course, that doesn't mean they should. A couple years ago, a German security official decided to install a bit of spyware on his daughter's computer so he could monitor her Internet usage. This backfired when one of his daughter's friends found the spyware and decided to hack his computer in retaliation.

Through the hack, the kid was eventually able to access several secure areas of Germany's federal police databases. Malware usually comes in a couple varieties: the quiet subtle kind that logs your keystrokes or opens backdoors for cybercriminals, or the flashy obnoxious kind that locks up your system for a while.

Ransomware takes the worst aspects of both types and puts them together for a nerve-wrenching attack on your computer. I can speak from personal experience on that front. I still don't know how it happened, but one day, my computer was locked up and the screen was filled with a message claiming to be from the FBI. Even though I: 1 knew I was innocent of any wrongdoing, 2 noticed several instances of poor English in the message, and 3 harbored serious doubts that the FBI would operate this way, paranoia nearly won out.

Although I was able to remove the virus, my computer wasn't quite the same, and eventually I had to re-install Windows. There's a lot of malware out there, and it can devastate individuals who don't take precautions with their computer security.



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