Media and computer virus history
Computer viruses have existed for over 40 years. During this time, they caused both panic and damage. They began to live their own lives in popular culture, and they are often described as something that destroys computers and data, loudly announcing their activities. Since that time, much has changed - the viruses have not gone away, but the principles of attack on computers have changed a lot since the 80s. Today we will talk about computer viruses, like archaeologists researching artifacts.
Until March 1992, viruses also existed, but few of them attracted attention before the appearance of the Michelangelo virus, which gave the media something that the previous articles on computer security did not have — an exciting story.
Despite the fact that he was a variant of a more cheerful virus , he had a cunning name, inspired by the coincidence of his birthday with the birthday of a famous artist; the date on which an event was scheduled; and devastating effects.
On March 6 of each year, this virus for the boot sector corrupted the data of this sector on the hard disk so that the usual user data from the disk was no longer available. It was a time bomb that was easy to describe in the news. And this story has become an ideal plot for intimidating the public.
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Partly for this you can thank John McAfee - then he was a prominent antivirus manufacturer and chairman of the Computer Virus Industry Association. He attracted a lot of attention in the 80s and early 90s, readily giving an interview to any journalist. And this event turned out to be very convenient for a person who did not hesitate to advertise himself.
“If you download the infected system on March 6, all data on the hard disk will be corrupted, ” McAfee told a computer security conference shortly before the virus attack. He was not the only speaker, but his speech was very effective at a time when people knew little about what a computer could do.
March 6 came and went, and although several computers suffered, no apocalypse inflated by the media came . “This has become the biggest non-event since Geraldo broke into one of Al Capone ’s crypts ,” ZDNet wrote about this in 1998. Reporters felt cheated.
"Many predictions were actually suspicions," wrote the author of technical articles George Smith in 1992 in the American Journalism Review . “Computer security vendors or related industries that usually made them gain by actively disseminating these stories. And many reporters clutched at them. ” It was not the first and not the last time when reporters inflated the story on computer security.
- Rob Rosenberger [Rob Rosenberger], a well-known skeptic in computer security, describes human panic when reporting computer viruses. In a 1997 article on this phenomenon, he particularly notes McAfee and other computer security experts, and accuses them of pursuing personal commercial gain in describing security issues. According to him, this is worsened by the fact that the media often turn to security issues not to experts, but to people selling the necessary software.
1. CIH, born in Taiwan in 1998, was more worthy of hype than Michelangelo. The virus from the Windows era, better known as " Chernobyl ", was able not only to erase data from the hard drive, but also to change the computer's BIOS, which made it impossible to use it. It was distributed not through e-mail, but through a CD with infected programs.
How does CIH destroy a computer
2. The first non-dangerous virus, which was not even called a virus - it was just an experiment of self-propagation of the program. It was called Creeper, worked on the Digital PDP-10 mainframe, and simply distributed the phrase “I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!”. Behind her came the virus "Reaper", trying to catch "Creeper".
3. Mac users often chuckle at Windows users due to the number of viruses on this system, but older Apple II computers often became victims of viruses . The most famous of them are CyberAIDS and Festering Hate. Great names for metal bands, by the way.
4. The Code Red virus, named after one of the flavors of Mountain Dew soda , quickly spread across the world through the Microsoft IIS web server, which in 2001 used many websites . He even penetrated the White House.
5. In 2005, Nokia phone owners had a chance to catch a virus. True truth : The Commwarrior pretended to be an MMS message from your friend, but after opening it, you understood that the message was anything but friendly . It was one of the first mobile viruses.
When discussing Robert Morris’s career as a Robert Morris, the word “atonement” comes to mind. Morris, today's partner of Y Combinator , helps owners of various startups polish their ideas and turn them into important and popular products. (For example, Dropbox is one of the earliest examples of the success of this incubator).
But like many others who used their technical knowledge to achieve success, his youth is not without dark spots. True, what he did was technically impressive. But the “Morris worm,” as his student hobby project was called, badly damaged the Internet at a time when the latter was very vulnerable.
“I remember how the news on the NBC Evening News was devoted to this story in less than 30 seconds,” writes Francis Litterio on the worm page . “If an equal-scale breakdown of the Internet had happened today, it would have taken the US presidential press conference to calm the public.”
In 1988, Morris, a student from Cornell, decided to write an application that spreads itself on Unix-computers, which then consisted of the Internet. Then the network was mainly used by business and scientists.
The goal of Morris was to create the first botnet, mainly in order to prove that he can do it. And although the worm was unable to achieve this, it began to actively and repeatedly copy itself on different machines due to an error in the code. As a result, its efficiency was so high that the universities had to disconnect from the Internet so that the equipment would not fail.
As a result of the out-of-control stunt, Morris became one of the first people convicted under the computer fraud and abuse law [ Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 ]. According to the same law, one of the Y Combinator graduates, Aaron Schwartz , was tried 25 years later. Morris narrowly escaped imprisonment.
Morris does not cover this topic to this day. But his worm had positive side effects - it showed how low the level of security was observed in university networks. People didn't think about security and passwords until Robert Morris showed up. Security is now considered an extremely important component of a large network. And Morris, who works as an adjunct professor in the computer science and AI lab at MIT, has become an example to be followed - which is not true of John McAfee .
"He did not try to make money or work in this area," Eugene Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue University, told Morris in an interview with The Washington Post . “His behavior consistently supported his defense: it was an accident, and he repents. I think that in his favor says the fact that since then he has behaved the same way. "
I do not want to say that viruses are not dangerous. They will remain an annoying disaster, no matter if they get on your laptop, phone or Jeep Cherokee . But we need to honestly talk about what malware is and why this topic is bothering us. The reason for the spread of many viruses is that they use the worst human instincts. We love everything to be easy, and we choose obvious passwords. We want to believe that our e-mail is safe, and we open letters, as it seems to us, from familiar people. We want to believe that the information found on the Internet does not lead us astray.
John McAfee was right about the fact that we need to worry about viruses, but Rob Rosenberger was right about the fact that we should not forget to filter information. The truth is somewhere in the middle. In an era when Download.com is more likely to clog your computer with junk than e-mail, you have nothing left but constant vigilance. But without panic - use brains.
The day when the media found out what a virus is.
Until March 1992, viruses also existed, but few of them attracted attention before the appearance of the Michelangelo virus, which gave the media something that the previous articles on computer security did not have — an exciting story.
Despite the fact that he was a variant of a more cheerful virus , he had a cunning name, inspired by the coincidence of his birthday with the birthday of a famous artist; the date on which an event was scheduled; and devastating effects.
On March 6 of each year, this virus for the boot sector corrupted the data of this sector on the hard disk so that the usual user data from the disk was no longer available. It was a time bomb that was easy to describe in the news. And this story has become an ideal plot for intimidating the public.
')
Partly for this you can thank John McAfee - then he was a prominent antivirus manufacturer and chairman of the Computer Virus Industry Association. He attracted a lot of attention in the 80s and early 90s, readily giving an interview to any journalist. And this event turned out to be very convenient for a person who did not hesitate to advertise himself.
“If you download the infected system on March 6, all data on the hard disk will be corrupted, ” McAfee told a computer security conference shortly before the virus attack. He was not the only speaker, but his speech was very effective at a time when people knew little about what a computer could do.
March 6 came and went, and although several computers suffered, no apocalypse inflated by the media came . “This has become the biggest non-event since Geraldo broke into one of Al Capone ’s crypts ,” ZDNet wrote about this in 1998. Reporters felt cheated.
"Many predictions were actually suspicions," wrote the author of technical articles George Smith in 1992 in the American Journalism Review . “Computer security vendors or related industries that usually made them gain by actively disseminating these stories. And many reporters clutched at them. ” It was not the first and not the last time when reporters inflated the story on computer security.
Mainly due to the false authority syndrome, users today often panic at the first signs of a computer’s unusual behavior, sometimes causing more harm on their own than their virus would do (if there was any virus at all).
- Rob Rosenberger [Rob Rosenberger], a well-known skeptic in computer security, describes human panic when reporting computer viruses. In a 1997 article on this phenomenon, he particularly notes McAfee and other computer security experts, and accuses them of pursuing personal commercial gain in describing security issues. According to him, this is worsened by the fact that the media often turn to security issues not to experts, but to people selling the necessary software.
Five computer viruses that left a mark in history
1. CIH, born in Taiwan in 1998, was more worthy of hype than Michelangelo. The virus from the Windows era, better known as " Chernobyl ", was able not only to erase data from the hard drive, but also to change the computer's BIOS, which made it impossible to use it. It was distributed not through e-mail, but through a CD with infected programs.
How does CIH destroy a computer
2. The first non-dangerous virus, which was not even called a virus - it was just an experiment of self-propagation of the program. It was called Creeper, worked on the Digital PDP-10 mainframe, and simply distributed the phrase “I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!”. Behind her came the virus "Reaper", trying to catch "Creeper".
3. Mac users often chuckle at Windows users due to the number of viruses on this system, but older Apple II computers often became victims of viruses . The most famous of them are CyberAIDS and Festering Hate. Great names for metal bands, by the way.
4. The Code Red virus, named after one of the flavors of Mountain Dew soda , quickly spread across the world through the Microsoft IIS web server, which in 2001 used many websites . He even penetrated the White House.
5. In 2005, Nokia phone owners had a chance to catch a virus. True truth : The Commwarrior pretended to be an MMS message from your friend, but after opening it, you understood that the message was anything but friendly . It was one of the first mobile viruses.
Co-founder Y Combinator created a computer worm that almost broke the entire Internet in 1988
When discussing Robert Morris’s career as a Robert Morris, the word “atonement” comes to mind. Morris, today's partner of Y Combinator , helps owners of various startups polish their ideas and turn them into important and popular products. (For example, Dropbox is one of the earliest examples of the success of this incubator).
But like many others who used their technical knowledge to achieve success, his youth is not without dark spots. True, what he did was technically impressive. But the “Morris worm,” as his student hobby project was called, badly damaged the Internet at a time when the latter was very vulnerable.
“I remember how the news on the NBC Evening News was devoted to this story in less than 30 seconds,” writes Francis Litterio on the worm page . “If an equal-scale breakdown of the Internet had happened today, it would have taken the US presidential press conference to calm the public.”
In 1988, Morris, a student from Cornell, decided to write an application that spreads itself on Unix-computers, which then consisted of the Internet. Then the network was mainly used by business and scientists.
The goal of Morris was to create the first botnet, mainly in order to prove that he can do it. And although the worm was unable to achieve this, it began to actively and repeatedly copy itself on different machines due to an error in the code. As a result, its efficiency was so high that the universities had to disconnect from the Internet so that the equipment would not fail.
As a result of the out-of-control stunt, Morris became one of the first people convicted under the computer fraud and abuse law [ Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 ]. According to the same law, one of the Y Combinator graduates, Aaron Schwartz , was tried 25 years later. Morris narrowly escaped imprisonment.
Morris does not cover this topic to this day. But his worm had positive side effects - it showed how low the level of security was observed in university networks. People didn't think about security and passwords until Robert Morris showed up. Security is now considered an extremely important component of a large network. And Morris, who works as an adjunct professor in the computer science and AI lab at MIT, has become an example to be followed - which is not true of John McAfee .
"He did not try to make money or work in this area," Eugene Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue University, told Morris in an interview with The Washington Post . “His behavior consistently supported his defense: it was an accident, and he repents. I think that in his favor says the fact that since then he has behaved the same way. "
I do not want to say that viruses are not dangerous. They will remain an annoying disaster, no matter if they get on your laptop, phone or Jeep Cherokee . But we need to honestly talk about what malware is and why this topic is bothering us. The reason for the spread of many viruses is that they use the worst human instincts. We love everything to be easy, and we choose obvious passwords. We want to believe that our e-mail is safe, and we open letters, as it seems to us, from familiar people. We want to believe that the information found on the Internet does not lead us astray.
John McAfee was right about the fact that we need to worry about viruses, but Rob Rosenberger was right about the fact that we should not forget to filter information. The truth is somewhere in the middle. In an era when Download.com is more likely to clog your computer with junk than e-mail, you have nothing left but constant vigilance. But without panic - use brains.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/399063/
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