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Happy B-Day Computer Virus
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-19
 Security News RSS Feed
January is a time of dubious celebration for that most acerbic of inventions, the computer virus. Back in 1986, the Brain made its way into computers via a 5 ¼ inch floppy computer disk. The Brain wasn't particularly nasty but it set the stage for something grand and nefarious.
The Brain was a boot sector virus transmitted from computer to computer via the floppy disk. F-Secure points out the long reign of the Brain lasted from 1986 to 1995. Then came the age of the macro virus and for four years, it gave grief to many an IT professional when propagation times shrank to around a month. They became a global problem.
As email became more widespread, so followed email worms and individual worms which reached global epidemic levels in just one day. Most notable in this connection was one of the very first emails worms, Loveletter aka ILOVEYOU, which caused widespread havoc and financial loss in 1999 before it was brought under control.
In 2001, the transmission time window shrank from one day to one hour with the introduction of network worms (such as Blaster and Sasser), which automatically and indiscriminately infected every online computer without adequate protection. Email and network worms still today continue to cause havoc in the IT world.
At present there are over 150,000 viruses and the number continues to grow rapidly. The biggest change over these 20 years has not been in the types of viruses or amount of malware: rather it has been in the motives of the virus writers.
"Certainly the most significant change has been the evolution of virus writing hobbyists into criminally operated gangs bent on financial gain," says F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen. "And this trend is showing no signs of stopping."
Hypponen continues: "There already are indications that malware authors will target laptop WLANs as the next vector for automatic spreading worms. Whatever the next step might be, it will be interesting to see what kind of viruses we will be talking about in another twenty years time - computer viruses infecting houses, perhaps?"
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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