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When any )] TJ ET BT 61.016 320.629 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(user played the game, it silently copied the latest version of itself into every accessible directory, including shared )] TJ ET BT 61.016 309.640 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(directories, consequently spreading throughout the network.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 278.851 Td /F1 9.0 Tf [(1978 The Vampire worm)] TJ ET BT 61.016 267.862 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(John Shoch and Jon Hupp at Xerox PARC began experimenting with worms designed to perform helpful tasks. The )] TJ ET BT 61.016 256.873 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Vampire worm was idle during the day, but at night it assigned tasks to under-used computers.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 226.084 Td /F1 9.0 Tf [(1981 Apple virus)] TJ ET BT 61.016 215.095 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Joe Dellinger, a student at Texas A&M University, modified the operating system on Apple II diskettes so that it would )] TJ ET BT 61.016 204.106 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(behave as a virus. As the virus had unintended side-effects, it was never released, but further versions were written and )] TJ ET BT 61.016 193.117 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(allowed to spread.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 162.328 Td /F1 9.0 Tf [(1982 Apple virus with side effects)] TJ ET BT 61.016 151.339 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Rich Skrenta, a 15-year-old, wrote Elk Cloner for the Apple II operating system. Elk Cloner ran whenever a computer was )] TJ ET BT 61.016 140.350 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(started from an infected floppy disk, and would infect any other floppy put into the disk drive. It displayed a message every )] TJ ET BT 61.016 129.361 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(50 times the computer was started.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 98.572 Td /F1 9.0 Tf [(1985 Mail Trojan)] TJ ET BT 61.016 87.583 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(The EGABTR Trojan horse was distributed via mailboxes, posing as a program designed to improve graphics display. )] TJ ET endstream endobj 8 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /Name /F1 /BaseFont /Helvetica-Bold /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding >> endobj 9 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /Name /F2 /BaseFont /Helvetica-Oblique /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding >> endobj 10 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /Name /F3 /BaseFont /Helvetica-BoldOblique /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding >> endobj 11 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /Name /F4 /BaseFont /Helvetica /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding >> endobj 12 0 obj << /Type /Page /Parent 3 0 R /Annots [ 14 0 R ] /Contents 13 0 R >> endobj 13 0 obj << /Length 1177 >> stream 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg 0.773 0.773 0.773 RG 0.702 0.800 0.816 rg 34.016 34.016 543.969 723.969 re f 1.000 1.000 1.000 rg 45.266 669.778 521.469 88.206 re f 0.773 0.773 0.773 rg 45.266 669.778 m 566.734 669.778 l 565.984 670.528 l 46.016 670.528 l f 566.734 757.984 m 566.734 669.778 l 565.984 670.528 l 565.984 757.984 l f 45.266 757.984 m 45.266 669.778 l 46.016 670.528 l 46.016 757.984 l f 61.016 685.528 m 550.984 685.528 l 550.984 686.278 l 61.016 686.278 l f 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 61.016 749.193 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(However, once run, it deleted all files on the hard disk and displayed a message.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 729.204 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [(Take note that information above is an extract from the)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 279.122 729.204 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [(Sophos Threatsaurus,)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 RG 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 279.122 728.053 m 367.664 728.053 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 367.664 729.204 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [( compiled by Sophos, a security software )] TJ ET BT 61.016 718.215 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [(and hardware company.)] TJ ET 0.400 0.400 0.400 rg BT 61.016 699.726 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [(Posted in:Security | Tagged:Trojan,Virus,Worm | With 2 comments)] TJ ET endstream endobj 14 0 obj << /Type /Annot /Subtype /Link /A 15 0 R /Border [0 0 0] /H /I /Rect [ 279.1217 728.3716 367.6637 737.5291 ] >> endobj 15 0 obj << /Type /Action /S /URI /URI (https://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/PDFs/other/sophosthreatsaurusaz.pdf?la=en) >> endobj xref 0 16 0000000000 65535 f 0000000008 00000 n 0000000073 00000 n 0000000119 00000 n 0000000312 00000 n 0000000341 00000 n 0000000479 00000 n 0000000542 00000 n 0000005225 00000 n 0000005337 00000 n 0000005452 00000 n 0000005572 00000 n 0000005680 00000 n 0000005764 00000 n 0000006994 00000 n 0000007122 00000 n trailer << /Size 16 /Root 1 0 R /Info 5 0 R >> startxref 7257 %%EOF worm « Informasietegnologie
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History of malware, Trojans and worms (Part 2)

Thursday, March 3rd, 2016

Last time we explored the more unknown viruses, Trojans and worms, up to 1985. Now we start off in 1986, where most histories do, with the first PC virus.

1986 The first virus for PCs
The first virus for IBM PCs, Brain, was allegedly written by two brothers in Pakistan, when they noticed that people were copying their software. The virus put a copy of itself and a copyright message on any floppy disk copies their customers made.

1987 The Christmas tree worm
This was an email Christmas card that included program code. If the user ran it, it drew a Christmas tree as promised, but also forwarded itself to everyone in the user’s address book. The traffic paralyzed the IBM worldwide network.

1988 The Internet Worm
Robert Morris, a 23-year-old student, released a worm on the US DARPA Internet. It spread to thousands of computers and, due to an error, kept re-infecting computers many times, causing them to crash.

1989 Trojan demands ransom
The AIDS Trojan horse came on a floppy disk that offered information about AIDS and HIV. The Trojan encrypted the computer’s hard disk and demanded payment in exchange for the password.

1991 The first polymorphic virus
Tequila was the first widespread polymorphic virus. Polymorphic viruses make detection difficult for virus scanners by changing their appearance with each new infection.

1992 The Michelangelo panic
The Michelangelo virus was designed to erase computer hard disks each year on March 6 (Michelangelo’s birthday). After two companies accidentally distributed infected disks and PCs, there was worldwide panic, but few computers were infected.

1994 The first email virus hoax
The first email hoax warned of a malicious virus that would erase an entire hard drive just by opening an email with the subject line “Good Times.”

1995 The first document virus
The first document or “macro” virus, Concept, appeared. It spread by exploiting the macros in Microsoft Word.

1998 The first virus to affect hardware
CIH or Chernobyl became the first virus to paralyze computer hardware. The virus attacked the BIOS, which is needed to boot up the computer.

1999 Email viruses
Melissa, a virus that forwards itself by email, spread worldwide. Bubbleboy, the first virus to infect a computer when email is viewed, appeared.

2000 Denial-of-service attacks
“Distributed denial-of-service” attacks by hackers put Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon and other high profile websites offline for several hours. Love Bug became the most successful email virus yet.

2000 Palm virus
The first virus appeared for the Palm operating system, although no users were infected.

2001 Viruses spread via websites or network shares
Malicious programs began to exploit vulnerabilities in software, so that they could spread without user intervention. Nimda infected users who simply browsed a website. Sircam used its own email program to spread, and also spread via network shares.

If this history timeline hasn’t satisfied your curiosity, the recently launched Malware Museum might peak your interest. 

Take note that information below is an extract from the Sophos Threatsaurus, compiled by Sophos, a security software and hardware company.

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Posted in E-mail, Security | Comments Off on History of malware, Trojans and worms (Part 2)

History of malware, Trojans and worms (Part 1)

Wednesday, February 17th, 2016

We’re always warning you against phishing, viruses and other nasty software which might harm your PC and data. For a change, let’s look at the history of these nasties. Where do they come from? How long have they been around for? Are they a recent phenomenon?

It seems not. Viruses have been doing the rounds for more than 50 years.

1949 Self-reproducing “cellular automata”
John von Neumann, the father of cybernetics, published a paper suggesting that a computer program could reproduce itself.

1959 Core Wars
H Douglas McIlroy, Victor Vysottsky, and Robert P Morris of Bell Labs developed a computer game called Core Wars, in which programs called organisms competed for computer processing time.

1960 “Rabbit” programs
Programmers began to write placeholders for mainframe computers. If no jobs were waiting, these programs added a copy of themselves to the end of the queue. They were nicknamed “rabbits” because they multiplied, using up system resources.

1971 The first worm
Bob Thomas, a developer working on ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet, wrote a program called Creeper that passed from computer to computer, displaying a message.

1975 Replicating code
A K Dewdney wrote Pervade as a sub-routine for a game run on computers using the UNIVAC 1100 system. When any user played the game, it silently copied the latest version of itself into every accessible directory, including shared directories, consequently spreading throughout the network.

1978 The Vampire worm
John Shoch and Jon Hupp at Xerox PARC began experimenting with worms designed to perform helpful tasks. The Vampire worm was idle during the day, but at night it assigned tasks to under-used computers.

1981 Apple virus
Joe Dellinger, a student at Texas A&M University, modified the operating system on Apple II diskettes so that it would behave as a virus. As the virus had unintended side-effects, it was never released, but further versions were written and allowed to spread.

1982 Apple virus with side effects
Rich Skrenta, a 15-year-old, wrote Elk Cloner for the Apple II operating system. Elk Cloner ran whenever a computer was started from an infected floppy disk, and would infect any other floppy put into the disk drive. It displayed a message every 50 times the computer was started.

1985 Mail Trojan
The EGABTR Trojan horse was distributed via mailboxes, posing as a program designed to improve graphics display. However, once run, it deleted all files on the hard disk and displayed a message.

Take note that information above is an extract from the Sophos Threatsaurus, compiled by Sophos, a security software and hardware company.

Email

Tags: , ,
Posted in Security | 2 Comments »

 

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