Pilot issue
The company BitDefender welcomes the inhabitants of "Habrahabra"!
From today, we are starting to publish a series of articles for Russian readers about anti-virus protection and information security in general. Our target audience is heads of organizations, system administrators, programmers, home users and professionals in related fields interested in the problems of information security.
We will consider topical issues of the theory and give practical recommendations for solving common computer problems. We will talk about typical mistakes that resulted in managers losing control over their information and, therefore, over their business. We will pay serious attention to the rarely used, but extremely effective methods of anti-virus protection. Speaking about computers and programs, we will not forget about the accompanying legal and economic issues that are important for almost every organization. We will talk about the key role of information technology specialists in the success of a modern company. We will try to summarize all the experience gained in the field of information security, and list the most important of the problems in this area that have not yet been solved by anyone and are waiting for their heroes.
')
We invite to the discussion everyone who shares the ideology of BitDefender: information is one of the most important values ​​of our civilization, and the immediate future of people depends on the quality and safety of information.
Will have to start from afar. Computers are not as they seem to most people :) Information technology, unfortunately, is developing in a not quite right direction.
About 100 years ago, the Earth began radiating meaningful radio signals into space. This could not fail to attract the attention of the Serykh intelligence, namely, its astrobiological department, which was responsible for preventing the development of aggressive bioforms on native planets.
Alas, it was such a bioform that developed on Earth at an alarming rate, regularly conducting planetary wars to work out military technologies and dreaming of space exploration. When it became clear that earthlings possessed the energy of nuclear decay and were close to the discovery of vacuum energy, an emergency meeting of the Chair of Galactic Biology of the Council of Elders of the Gray Race was convened.
“We fear that they will not destroy themselves and come out with a weapon into deep space,” the First Elder told the audience. - And we can not do anything with them because of this new law on the protection of primitive organisms!
“Regarding the outer space, do not worry: we have recruited a good agent on the planet in advance who introduced the idea of ​​impossibility of superluminal speeds into the minds of the natives,” said an intelligence spokesman. - But our biocontrol cordon on the far side of the moon is really in danger. Finding a cordon, earthlings will become even more aggressive.
“We need to distract them with something,” suggested one of the elders. - Perhaps it makes sense to throw them some kind of toy that will completely absorb their pitiful minds and force them to act in the direction we want.
“The best toy for our goal is information technology,” said the First Elder.
- Are you sure? - the Second Elder was surprised. - If this bioform receives information technologies at its disposal, then if used correctly, it will not only not self-destruct, but, on the contrary, will become stronger.
“That's it that only when properly applied,” the First Elder explained. - And on this earthlings are incapable. It is enough to captivate them with a bright toy, and they will erect it into the cult of the absolute, tying all their economy and all their military forces to it. And that means their lives. We will give them an idea of ​​what a computer is, and in a couple of generations they themselves will make computers in huge numbers - but primitive and terribly vulnerable. Earthlings will put their entire planet in total dependence on them - energy, transport, trade, industry, medicine, education, and government. Almost certainly, foolishly, they will connect all the computers into one network, after which they will only have to run a virus there - and the planet will return to its primitive state at once.
- Great idea! - the representative of intelligence was delighted. - By the way, according to our data, they have a bisexual reproduction system. With the right approach, we will be able to make it dependent on vulnerable computers. My grays will recruit agents of influence on this planet. They will make the earthlings forget how to create pairs for reproduction differently than through their planetary computer network. Failure of this network will mean not only the destruction of the economy of earthlings, but also the simultaneous termination of their biological reproduction.
- How do we embed the virus? - someone asked. - The law on the protection of primitive organisms prohibits direct intervention.
“As an astrobiologist specializing in such forms of life, I can assure you: the natives are so stupid that we don’t have to do this,” the intelligence representative said. - They themselves will create destructive viruses and will themselves introduce them into their global network. Just by the time they become fully dependent on her. They like to destroy the life support systems of their race. The introduction of viruses into their own network will be a continuation of their millennial logic of suicidal wars, but already at a fatal level.
“So the decision has been made,” the First Elder concluded. - We will give them information technology. All that they already have - cold weapons, chemical, biological, and nuclear - they know how to control relatively easily. And the processes occurring in the depths of the network of billions of computers, they can not control. Let every earthling in his pocket be a computer, and even without it it will be impossible to step even step! Let no one be able to buy and sell anything without computers! Let the natives transfer all their finances, transactions, legal relations, mass media to computers! Let computers control the power plants of earthlings, their nuclear weapons and aircraft! Let computers make decisions on exchanges, count the results of state elections and participate in military operations! And let it all be subject to viruses! Send an order to the biocontrol moon cordon: you should immediately imitate a plate crash near the military testing ground of the strongest state on this planet.
The representative of intelligence unfolded the map of the United States on the whole screen, turned on communication with the cordon and transmitted the order of the First.
“Right here in Roswell.” Today. There should be nothing valuable on board: leave them to study only the old solid-state chips on electrons, liquid crystal displays and other stuff that is needed for our project. Check that the chips do not have any information about how to write software. Earthlings should not have any idea about the principles of information security! To make it more believable, make subatomic copies of two cordon employees and place them on board under the guise of dead pilots. Do not forget to wipe the biocopy brains with zeros, and then with random numbers. Make sure that the locals do not hand over the plate to the scrap: it should fall into the hands of the military as soon as possible. Take action.
* * *
Jokes aside :) Regardless of whether living beings formed of themselves from atoms, whether they are alienated on Earth by aliens or created by God, they do not know how not to make mistakes.
Alchemists long and unsuccessfully boiled gold. Surgeons were cutting patients, unaware of germs and asepsis. Peoples overthrew some tyrants, and then applauded others. One of the peaks of mass faith in the final victory of humanism and progress came at the beginning of the 20th century - just before the 1st World War. At one time, the atomic bomb was in fashion, and test explosions gathered numerous spectators. People regularly do stupid things in all areas of their work.
To learn how to protect information, you need to understand that the history of computing technology is no exception. It is necessary to realize that for seven decades of computer engineering a lot of wrong and irreversible decisions were made - and for some of them today you have to pay dearly. It is necessary to develop a critical view on many concepts and stereotypes that have historically evolved in the field of information security. Specialists, well-versed in the subject, know that by 2011 this area was in deep crisis. The unsolvable problems here are more than successes. Security investments are increasingly ineffective - this is not a secret for system integrators. Recently, the total losses of the world economy from constant troubles with computers have become comparable to damage from military actions.
The fact is that while creating the foundation of the current computer industry - architectures, microcircuits, interfaces, low-level programming languages, operating systems - for decades the specialists did not notice the virus danger, did not take it seriously or did not take it seriously. Later, they noticed, but did not understand the essence of the threat and did not believe in its global nature. And when, at last, they understood and believed - it was already too late. At the beginning of the 21st century, it turned out that the very computers and computer networks that are used everywhere, forming the basis of the post-industrial economy of the Earth, are doomed to remain chronically infected - due to past mistakes, due to unsuccessful design features and architectural solutions.
But the majority of people - including many programmers, analysts, system administrators, CIO - still do not see the industry’s system crisis, fully trust computers to the established design and judge their functionality mainly by body design and user interface :) States vied with each other to announce the transfer to system blocks and smart cards of various life support systems - from financial mechanisms to interdepartmental document circulation. Computers confidently write bills to people. Based on the data issued by computers, judicial and political decisions are taken. These data now determine the property rights and the guilt of citizens in “cybercrime”. Units and zeros generated by machines, people sincerely consider legally significant. Machines are accepted to be believed, and people get used to acting on their instructions. The beautiful glow of the screens and screens fascinates, and by the efforts of the PR publicists, the field of information technologies seems to the society a shining window of progress and a panacea for all social ills.
In fact, the state of information technology is rather raw. It resembles the state of surgery in the mid-19th century, and with opposite trends. Until now, no one on Earth has learned to write programs without errors. They tried for a long time - but then they abandoned this idea. A closer look at the shining world of "high technology" reveals the eerie and rapidly growing jumble of countless incompatible languages, protocols, standards; bugs, patches, vulnerabilities, exploits, bookmarks, viruses, botnets, denial of service, attacks, accidents, freezes, legal risks, lawsuits, scandals, dirt, fraud and other complex problems. Everything connected with the Network is vulnerable. As in the old days, the alchemist knew that something would explode in his hands once, so today every office employee knows that sooner or later he will see something like a “blue screen of death” or an ultimatum demanding money for unlocking information.
People imprudently combined a billion system units into a hypercomputer - the Internet. This complex system, infected with tens of millions of viruses, is weak and unstable. With the expansion and complication of its behavior in conditions of chronic infection becomes less predictable. And modern viruses are no longer primitive machines, devoid of reason. The global network allows a person to manage their virtual creations, coordinating their actions in real time and giving them intelligence. Virus today is managed by talented professionals and serious organizations. They cannot but show interest in a giant and poorly controlled system in which the key financial and information flows of the planet are concentrated.
There is too much at stake. The simplest executable file thrown by competitors can ruin the owner of a small company. A more sophisticated, well-thought-out program can strike a big business and the stock market: the recent paralysis of one of Sony’s businesses, accompanied by scandal and falling stocks, is a good lesson for any other company. A large botnet is quite capable of provoking a new Great Depression - and in such a way that almost no one will notice its true causes.
All the major economies of Europe, the USA, China, and Japan fell into critical dependence on computers. No organization today can feel secure. Among the objects of successful attacks in recent months were even the solid Lockheed Martin, Citigroup and the International Monetary Fund. By the way, we are talking only about the identified attacks - and how many more corporate systems are infected and prepared for “X hour”? Nobody knows that. By June 2011, the problem reached the level of big international politics and is now recognized as “very serious” even in public statements by the head of the Pentagon and the US authorities. The concept of launching combat missiles in response to the launch of combat computer programs — one country against another — is increasingly being discussed. While some people diligently transfer their life-support systems to computers, others, more far-sighted, realized that a computer virus — in a certain way composed of a sequence of numbers — can be a weapon that can destroy the usual way of life on any given day.
On the one hand, this constant and rapidly growing danger creates a huge market for antivirus companies and steady demand: in a global economy, no business can exist without antiviruses. BitDefender products protect more than 41 million computers of our clients around the world - on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS platforms. And all together taken antiviruses, based on the licensed BitDefender engine and produced under different brands in different countries, use about 390 million people.
On the other hand, we do not intend to rest on our laurels. We understand that even the joint efforts of all anti-virus companies of the planet in the current situation are insufficient. They provide only fragile parity in the endless positional war against computer infections, suppressing their main mass and keeping the Internet from immediately slipping into chaos - but no more. The key to the transition from a positional war to a complete and final victory is to change the established concepts and stereotypes in the field of information security. Without changes in the public consciousness, you can fight viruses endlessly - and new ones will endlessly appear, like self-replicating bots in an arcade game. The state of computer systems as a whole will only deteriorate until the recession in the economy reaches a fatal level, after which no antiviruses will be needed by the majority of the population. We strive to prevent this development.
By publishing on “Habrahabr” we want to help all who value their information and are ready to make efforts to put their computer infrastructure in order, getting rid of many troubles once and for all. In 2011 it is too late to do this, it is difficult, but with the right approach it is still possible. The most important thing for a radical solution of a problem is to understand its essence and understand its causes. Therefore, we consider the history of the emergence of viruses almost from the very beginning of the computer era - from 1944.
* * *
Read in the next issue:
Programs, data and their owners. About computer architectures - technical and social.
From today, we are starting to publish a series of articles for Russian readers about anti-virus protection and information security in general. Our target audience is heads of organizations, system administrators, programmers, home users and professionals in related fields interested in the problems of information security.
We will consider topical issues of the theory and give practical recommendations for solving common computer problems. We will talk about typical mistakes that resulted in managers losing control over their information and, therefore, over their business. We will pay serious attention to the rarely used, but extremely effective methods of anti-virus protection. Speaking about computers and programs, we will not forget about the accompanying legal and economic issues that are important for almost every organization. We will talk about the key role of information technology specialists in the success of a modern company. We will try to summarize all the experience gained in the field of information security, and list the most important of the problems in this area that have not yet been solved by anyone and are waiting for their heroes.
')
We invite to the discussion everyone who shares the ideology of BitDefender: information is one of the most important values ​​of our civilization, and the immediate future of people depends on the quality and safety of information.
Will have to start from afar. Computers are not as they seem to most people :) Information technology, unfortunately, is developing in a not quite right direction.
Background, the possibility of which science does not exclude
About 100 years ago, the Earth began radiating meaningful radio signals into space. This could not fail to attract the attention of the Serykh intelligence, namely, its astrobiological department, which was responsible for preventing the development of aggressive bioforms on native planets.
Alas, it was such a bioform that developed on Earth at an alarming rate, regularly conducting planetary wars to work out military technologies and dreaming of space exploration. When it became clear that earthlings possessed the energy of nuclear decay and were close to the discovery of vacuum energy, an emergency meeting of the Chair of Galactic Biology of the Council of Elders of the Gray Race was convened.
“We fear that they will not destroy themselves and come out with a weapon into deep space,” the First Elder told the audience. - And we can not do anything with them because of this new law on the protection of primitive organisms!
“Regarding the outer space, do not worry: we have recruited a good agent on the planet in advance who introduced the idea of ​​impossibility of superluminal speeds into the minds of the natives,” said an intelligence spokesman. - But our biocontrol cordon on the far side of the moon is really in danger. Finding a cordon, earthlings will become even more aggressive.
“We need to distract them with something,” suggested one of the elders. - Perhaps it makes sense to throw them some kind of toy that will completely absorb their pitiful minds and force them to act in the direction we want.
“The best toy for our goal is information technology,” said the First Elder.
- Are you sure? - the Second Elder was surprised. - If this bioform receives information technologies at its disposal, then if used correctly, it will not only not self-destruct, but, on the contrary, will become stronger.
“That's it that only when properly applied,” the First Elder explained. - And on this earthlings are incapable. It is enough to captivate them with a bright toy, and they will erect it into the cult of the absolute, tying all their economy and all their military forces to it. And that means their lives. We will give them an idea of ​​what a computer is, and in a couple of generations they themselves will make computers in huge numbers - but primitive and terribly vulnerable. Earthlings will put their entire planet in total dependence on them - energy, transport, trade, industry, medicine, education, and government. Almost certainly, foolishly, they will connect all the computers into one network, after which they will only have to run a virus there - and the planet will return to its primitive state at once.
- Great idea! - the representative of intelligence was delighted. - By the way, according to our data, they have a bisexual reproduction system. With the right approach, we will be able to make it dependent on vulnerable computers. My grays will recruit agents of influence on this planet. They will make the earthlings forget how to create pairs for reproduction differently than through their planetary computer network. Failure of this network will mean not only the destruction of the economy of earthlings, but also the simultaneous termination of their biological reproduction.
- How do we embed the virus? - someone asked. - The law on the protection of primitive organisms prohibits direct intervention.
“As an astrobiologist specializing in such forms of life, I can assure you: the natives are so stupid that we don’t have to do this,” the intelligence representative said. - They themselves will create destructive viruses and will themselves introduce them into their global network. Just by the time they become fully dependent on her. They like to destroy the life support systems of their race. The introduction of viruses into their own network will be a continuation of their millennial logic of suicidal wars, but already at a fatal level.
“So the decision has been made,” the First Elder concluded. - We will give them information technology. All that they already have - cold weapons, chemical, biological, and nuclear - they know how to control relatively easily. And the processes occurring in the depths of the network of billions of computers, they can not control. Let every earthling in his pocket be a computer, and even without it it will be impossible to step even step! Let no one be able to buy and sell anything without computers! Let the natives transfer all their finances, transactions, legal relations, mass media to computers! Let computers control the power plants of earthlings, their nuclear weapons and aircraft! Let computers make decisions on exchanges, count the results of state elections and participate in military operations! And let it all be subject to viruses! Send an order to the biocontrol moon cordon: you should immediately imitate a plate crash near the military testing ground of the strongest state on this planet.
The representative of intelligence unfolded the map of the United States on the whole screen, turned on communication with the cordon and transmitted the order of the First.
“Right here in Roswell.” Today. There should be nothing valuable on board: leave them to study only the old solid-state chips on electrons, liquid crystal displays and other stuff that is needed for our project. Check that the chips do not have any information about how to write software. Earthlings should not have any idea about the principles of information security! To make it more believable, make subatomic copies of two cordon employees and place them on board under the guise of dead pilots. Do not forget to wipe the biocopy brains with zeros, and then with random numbers. Make sure that the locals do not hand over the plate to the scrap: it should fall into the hands of the military as soon as possible. Take action.
* * *
Jokes aside :) Regardless of whether living beings formed of themselves from atoms, whether they are alienated on Earth by aliens or created by God, they do not know how not to make mistakes.
Alchemists long and unsuccessfully boiled gold. Surgeons were cutting patients, unaware of germs and asepsis. Peoples overthrew some tyrants, and then applauded others. One of the peaks of mass faith in the final victory of humanism and progress came at the beginning of the 20th century - just before the 1st World War. At one time, the atomic bomb was in fashion, and test explosions gathered numerous spectators. People regularly do stupid things in all areas of their work.
To learn how to protect information, you need to understand that the history of computing technology is no exception. It is necessary to realize that for seven decades of computer engineering a lot of wrong and irreversible decisions were made - and for some of them today you have to pay dearly. It is necessary to develop a critical view on many concepts and stereotypes that have historically evolved in the field of information security. Specialists, well-versed in the subject, know that by 2011 this area was in deep crisis. The unsolvable problems here are more than successes. Security investments are increasingly ineffective - this is not a secret for system integrators. Recently, the total losses of the world economy from constant troubles with computers have become comparable to damage from military actions.
The fact is that while creating the foundation of the current computer industry - architectures, microcircuits, interfaces, low-level programming languages, operating systems - for decades the specialists did not notice the virus danger, did not take it seriously or did not take it seriously. Later, they noticed, but did not understand the essence of the threat and did not believe in its global nature. And when, at last, they understood and believed - it was already too late. At the beginning of the 21st century, it turned out that the very computers and computer networks that are used everywhere, forming the basis of the post-industrial economy of the Earth, are doomed to remain chronically infected - due to past mistakes, due to unsuccessful design features and architectural solutions.
But the majority of people - including many programmers, analysts, system administrators, CIO - still do not see the industry’s system crisis, fully trust computers to the established design and judge their functionality mainly by body design and user interface :) States vied with each other to announce the transfer to system blocks and smart cards of various life support systems - from financial mechanisms to interdepartmental document circulation. Computers confidently write bills to people. Based on the data issued by computers, judicial and political decisions are taken. These data now determine the property rights and the guilt of citizens in “cybercrime”. Units and zeros generated by machines, people sincerely consider legally significant. Machines are accepted to be believed, and people get used to acting on their instructions. The beautiful glow of the screens and screens fascinates, and by the efforts of the PR publicists, the field of information technologies seems to the society a shining window of progress and a panacea for all social ills.
In fact, the state of information technology is rather raw. It resembles the state of surgery in the mid-19th century, and with opposite trends. Until now, no one on Earth has learned to write programs without errors. They tried for a long time - but then they abandoned this idea. A closer look at the shining world of "high technology" reveals the eerie and rapidly growing jumble of countless incompatible languages, protocols, standards; bugs, patches, vulnerabilities, exploits, bookmarks, viruses, botnets, denial of service, attacks, accidents, freezes, legal risks, lawsuits, scandals, dirt, fraud and other complex problems. Everything connected with the Network is vulnerable. As in the old days, the alchemist knew that something would explode in his hands once, so today every office employee knows that sooner or later he will see something like a “blue screen of death” or an ultimatum demanding money for unlocking information.
People imprudently combined a billion system units into a hypercomputer - the Internet. This complex system, infected with tens of millions of viruses, is weak and unstable. With the expansion and complication of its behavior in conditions of chronic infection becomes less predictable. And modern viruses are no longer primitive machines, devoid of reason. The global network allows a person to manage their virtual creations, coordinating their actions in real time and giving them intelligence. Virus today is managed by talented professionals and serious organizations. They cannot but show interest in a giant and poorly controlled system in which the key financial and information flows of the planet are concentrated.
There is too much at stake. The simplest executable file thrown by competitors can ruin the owner of a small company. A more sophisticated, well-thought-out program can strike a big business and the stock market: the recent paralysis of one of Sony’s businesses, accompanied by scandal and falling stocks, is a good lesson for any other company. A large botnet is quite capable of provoking a new Great Depression - and in such a way that almost no one will notice its true causes.
All the major economies of Europe, the USA, China, and Japan fell into critical dependence on computers. No organization today can feel secure. Among the objects of successful attacks in recent months were even the solid Lockheed Martin, Citigroup and the International Monetary Fund. By the way, we are talking only about the identified attacks - and how many more corporate systems are infected and prepared for “X hour”? Nobody knows that. By June 2011, the problem reached the level of big international politics and is now recognized as “very serious” even in public statements by the head of the Pentagon and the US authorities. The concept of launching combat missiles in response to the launch of combat computer programs — one country against another — is increasingly being discussed. While some people diligently transfer their life-support systems to computers, others, more far-sighted, realized that a computer virus — in a certain way composed of a sequence of numbers — can be a weapon that can destroy the usual way of life on any given day.
On the one hand, this constant and rapidly growing danger creates a huge market for antivirus companies and steady demand: in a global economy, no business can exist without antiviruses. BitDefender products protect more than 41 million computers of our clients around the world - on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS platforms. And all together taken antiviruses, based on the licensed BitDefender engine and produced under different brands in different countries, use about 390 million people.
On the other hand, we do not intend to rest on our laurels. We understand that even the joint efforts of all anti-virus companies of the planet in the current situation are insufficient. They provide only fragile parity in the endless positional war against computer infections, suppressing their main mass and keeping the Internet from immediately slipping into chaos - but no more. The key to the transition from a positional war to a complete and final victory is to change the established concepts and stereotypes in the field of information security. Without changes in the public consciousness, you can fight viruses endlessly - and new ones will endlessly appear, like self-replicating bots in an arcade game. The state of computer systems as a whole will only deteriorate until the recession in the economy reaches a fatal level, after which no antiviruses will be needed by the majority of the population. We strive to prevent this development.
By publishing on “Habrahabr” we want to help all who value their information and are ready to make efforts to put their computer infrastructure in order, getting rid of many troubles once and for all. In 2011 it is too late to do this, it is difficult, but with the right approach it is still possible. The most important thing for a radical solution of a problem is to understand its essence and understand its causes. Therefore, we consider the history of the emergence of viruses almost from the very beginning of the computer era - from 1944.
* * *
Read in the next issue:
Programs, data and their owners. About computer architectures - technical and social.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/121279/
All Articles