Going Viral - A brief history of computer viruses
If you own a Windows computer, PC, or any type of computer (Maybe not the Mac) you have probably heard of the term, Anti-Virus software, like Norton, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky. But what are they protecting you from? Viruses of course, but hopefully you really have not seen them in action, mainly because, if you do get a virus, the Anti Virus software will save you !!!
The virus might be in an email which you know is fake, or if you did open it, it will probably be too late.
Viruses come in many forms. Some of them will come through a love letter, an attachment or just you received it from some else getting it. Now you are probably wondering what do the viruses do when they attack you, but they all have different ways of 'attacking' - depending who made them, and what they are called.
Some viruses like ILoveYou, explorer.zip and Autorun destroy, replace data with itself or make certain things unavailable. Some like Brain and So Big just attack then either tell you have been hacked and who to contact or they just deactivate themselves. Now let's talk about some of them.
ILoveYou was probably the most dangerous virus to ever exist, its job was simple. First, send an email saying I Love You with an attachment. Second, if the attachment was opened, clone its self to replace jpegs, wav/mp3/ogg etc. The ILoveYou virus infected over 50 million people and caused $10 billion of damage.
Magistr might not be as well known as other viruses on this list, but could be the deadliest. It was one of the most complicated viruses as well, its victims were Outlook Express users who were sent an attachment. It was identified on March 2001. After opening the attachment, the virus, like most others, sent messages to everybody in the victim’s contact list, then overwrote flashable bios, which stopped the ability to boot. On top of that, it had a debugging feature which made it also impossible to 'lock on and destroy'.
PoisonIvy could be dubbed a 'Computer security nightmare' because once you get infected with this virus, your computer becomes remote controllable and allows hackers to attack you. It even has the power to use the in built mircophones and webcam on your device. It even has attacked computers used for defence and chemical manufacturing purposes.
Brain was one of the first viruses to exist, it was created by two people Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi. The virus didn't do too much, all it did was tell people they had a virus and who to contact, but soon after some hackers copied the code and well, the virus spread.
The virus named Storm was a 'Trojan horse virus' which is a virus that disguises it so it doesn't look suspicious, Storm and ILoveYou are some of those. Storm disguises itself as a news article that sounds real like,' 14 people were killed in boat failure problems'. The only reason the virus was named Storm was because one of the articles said '230 dead after storm'. Also Storm is a 'Mother Virus' which allows other viruses to do their own thing and controls other machines. After opening the attachment the virus infects the computer and allows its 'Virus Children', 'zombies' or 'bots' to do other bad stuff.
Stuxnet was possibly one of the most targeted viruses that was hiding in everything you could see in 2009 and 2010, but it didn't cause world chaos, rather it had a target. It was a piece of code that exploited gaps in the security which are called 'zero day' errors. Stuxnet found 20 zero day errors and reports say it found its way mainly into Nuclear Power Plants in Iran which was its target.
Wanacry is one of the most recent viruses to pop up, and it spread like wildfire! It infected over 200,000 computers in over 100 countries and that was just over the weekend! It is a ransomware virus - it restricts what you can use and asks money to get it back, usually in BitCoins. WannaCry claims it will raise the price if you don't pay the ransom demand and will eventually delete your data! Also, it has been attacking lots of medical services and even people have theorised/theorized that the hacker behind it would release a pirated version of a yet to be released Disney movie! Luckily enough someone accidentally found the virus's kill switch, which turned almost the whole thing off.
Some Burning Questions:
Can you be sent to jail for creating a virus?
Yes! Creating a virus that can damage the computer in any way can be classified as a criminal offence. One time, someone who was 17, created a virus, got caught by the police, but for his young age instead of going to jail, he was sentenced to 21 months of community service.
A 15-year-old who used the handle Mafiaboy famously took down eTrade, eBay, and Yahoo! way back in 2000. After eight months in a youth rehab facility and another on probation, Mafiaboy supposedly started receiving job offers from cybersecurity providers !?!
What was the most dangerous virus to ever exist?
Most people would have to say, the ILoveYou virus. Mainly because it effected 50 million of people and damage $10 billion worth of tech, mostly computers. But other people would say other ones, like, Code red, So big, or Nimda. It is just a matter of opinion, and in what area you look at. For example, the original Code Red worm initiated a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the White House. That means all the computers infected with Code Red tried to contact the Web servers at the White House at the same time, overloading the machines.
What happenes in real life when a virus hits?
Most viruses usally attack the user and spread, but sometimes it gets a bit out of hand, like SQL Slammer (A virus that 'uses the back door', kinda similar to a Trojan horse.). It can block up important services, like in America, SQL Slammer made the 911 services have outages in Seattle. And some of them like Stuxnet had a specific target which was disrupting plans to create Nuclear Power Plants.
Should I get anti-virus software on my Mac?
Even though it is rare to get viruses on a Mac, you should get extra protection just so if a new Mac virus goes around, you will be even more protected.
Summing Up:
So you now know we have Anti Virus software. Viruses can be a news article, an attachment, a love letter or just malware exploiting gaps in the system called zero day, so next time you see a piece of mail from someone you don't know, think twice about whether it is worth opening it !!!
