Malicious Code
Introduction
"The wind of change came on 26th March in the form of an email cyclone called Melissa. Moreover, during 1999 numerous changes in the level of computer virus technology were seen," Armstrong (May 2000, p1).
From an organisational point of view, societies around the world are just learning about the level of importance that computer security against virus attacks and the critical significance of cybercrime. Companies around the world lost vast amounts of time, money and resources due to the lack of defense systems and lack of knowledge.
Companies must ensure that the all data processing equipment like computers, routers and networks are robust and secure to withstand any type of malicious attack.
The following report details some of the more common malicious code specifically viruses, explaining some of the damage, which these very powerful viruses can inflict on to any computer that it is not well prepared for this kinds of attacks.
Armstrong (July 2000, p1), states that: ‘February's big story for the information security marketplace was the distributed denial-of-service attacks, which rendered the likes of Yahoo!, eBay, and E*Trade helpless. Most recently, news of the LoveBug hit. While statisticians still grapple with the costs associated with recuperating from this newest bug's sting, the latest reports indicate that approximately 90 per cent of networks worldwide were affected. Recovery costs associated with the LoveBug are estimated to range from about $600 million upwards to a big $10 billion. Along with all these woes, companies also have to fend off attacks - not only from the outside, but more importantly from inside.
Malicious Code - A Virus
According to Pfleeger (1997, p179) A virus is a program that can pass on malicious code to other nonmalicious programs by modifying them. The term virus arises because the affected program acts like a biological virus: modification of good programs is like a virus that infects other healthy subjects.
In Australia damaging data in a computer carries heavy penalties, according to Carroll (1997, p33) in New South Wales, section 310 of the Crimes Act as amended in 1989 states that a person intentionally and without authority or lawful excuse destroys, alters or erases data, or inserts data, or interrupts or obstructs the lawful use of a computer is liable to ten years of penal servitude or a fine of $100,000 or both .
According to Fites, Kratz & Brebner (1989) viruses or worms , program contructions which can degrade an operating system, destroy data files, and do much damage to the information a computer works with.
Compared to past, today we have sound security policies, established cyber laws, active monitoring systems, and extra layers of security in form of firewalls etc., to prevent access to uninvited guests for your network and most importantly increased user awareness. But still there exist vulnerabilities in and around the cyber space of which the hackers exploit for different purposes. The monetary losses we suffer today are much greater in magnitude as well as in mass. But, we definitely are in a better place compared to the time the events in this book took place.
In India, 144,937 women were newly detected with breast cancer and 70,218 women died of breast cancer in 2012. For every 2 women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, one lady is dying of it. Incidence of breast cancer has also increased from 25.9% in the year of 2008 to 27% in 2012.In the year 2012, there were about 2, 32,000 breast cancer cases reported in the US, whereas in India, 1,45,000 new cases were diagnosed. This implies that, though, because of India's population, the percentage of total women affected seems less, the breast cancer burden in India has almost reached about 2/3rds of that of the US and is steadily rising. For the years 2015, there will be an estimated 1, 55,000 new cases of breast cancer and about 76000 women in India are expected to die of the disease.
Yousuf, originally named Hovsep, was born in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (Currently Turkey). He grew up during the Armenian Genocide (A bloody massacre that occurred in 1915 which killed thousands of Armenians). Yousuf Karsh witnessed many of his own relates being slaughtered and at the he wrote, “I saw my sister die of starvation as we were driven from village to village.” At the age of 14, he fled with his family to Syria toe scape persecution. Two years later, his parents dispatched him to live in with his uncle George Nakash, A photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Yousuf attended school there and assisted in his uncle’s photography studio. Yousuf’s original desire was to study medicine but as time went on,...
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services produced by factors of production within a country in a given period of time. It can be calculated using either the income, output, or expenditure method as illustrated on the circular flow of income diagram below.
I decided to read the book by David Harley called Viruses Revealed. This book goes into great detail about the different kinds of viruses and virus mechanisms, the solutions to these viruses, studies on different cases of viruses and then the social aspects of viruses. In the first part of the book, Harley talks about the problems with viruses. A virus is a program that infects other programs to modify them. “Infecting means that a virus will insert itself into the chain of command” (Harley). The virus structure was defined into three different parts: Infection, Payload, and Trigger. The infection is defined as the way or ways in which the virus spreads. The payload is defined as what the virus does besides duplicating itself. Trigger is defined as the procedure that decides whether or not the payload is necessary. Harley also talks about the difference between damage versus infection. The major difference between the two is that many users have infected documents or applications on their computer. Whether or not those applications are run is the difference between the two. In part one Harley also converses about Trojan Horses. Trojan horses are normally known as a virus, but he shoots that down. Harley says that Trojan Horses are normally not viruses, but just a worm that goes from computer to computer. After talking about different kinds of viruses and worms, he goes into Anti-Virus softwares. There are two different kinds of anti-viruses. One being virus-specific. Virus-specific means that every time a virus is found on your computer, it is identified but not detected. Generic scanners do the opposite. Generic scanners detect viruses but do not identify them.
As electronic commerce, online business-to-business operations, and global connectivity have become vital components of a successful business strategy, enterprises have adopted security processes and practices to protect information assets. But if you look at today's computing environments, system security is a horrible game of numbers: there are currently over 9,223 publicly released vulnerabilities covering known security holes in a massive range of applications from popular Operating Systems through to obscure and relatively unknown web applications. [01] Over 300 new vulnerabilities are being discovered and released each month. Most companies work diligently to maintain an efficient, effective security policy, implementing the latest products and services to prevent fraud, vandalism, sabotage, and denial of service attacks. But the fact is you have to patch every hole of your system, but an attacker need find only one to get into your environment. Whilst many organisations subscribe to major vendor's security alerts, these are just the tip of the security iceberg and even these are often ignored. For example, the patch for the Code Red worm was available some weeks before the worm was released. [02]
In this globalized arena, with the proliferating computer users as well as computer networks, risks associated like Malware attacks are also multiplying. As the proverb
A corporations CSR should be shaped in order to fit the goals of the corporation, although every corporation’s CSR should differ, since most have different goals and different communities behind them. The CSR should be molded into fitting the corporation’s goals in order to make it easier on the corporation in giving back to the community while achieving its goals. For example, a corporation located in a desert wishes to be more efficient, by reducing water usage it is not only creating lower costs, which result in higher revenue, but also helps the community by not taking up so much water. Taking this into consideration, it is critical that the corporation goals and values are established and clear throughout the corporation, they should be developed by the board or directors and CEO, and the highest managerial level should stress their importance to the rest of the corporation. By making the goals and values at the top branch of the corporate hierarchy, it will be simpler for the corporates community to develop in order to nurture those goals and values. Therefore, a corporation can reach the “shared-value,” a value for both its shareholders and community in a simpler manner that can result benefiting the corporation in the end as well. Throughout the article many examples are given of actual corporations that have benefited and changed their CSR in order to fit their goals, therefore, providing solid proof that these methods work. Nevertheless, as acknowledged by the author’s themselves, most of the corporations taken into consideration where one’s that Harvard CSR students were employed
To combat those threats and ensure that e-business transactions are not compromised, security technology must play a major role in today's networks. Why Networks Must Be Secured? Attacks: -. Without proper protection, any part of any network can be susceptible to attacks or unauthorized activity. Routers, switches, and hosts can all be violated by professional hackers, company competitors.
Malicious code, also known as malware, installed on a computer provides an attacker with the control over this machine. Therefore, malware can be defined as “a set of instructions that run on your computer and make your system do something that an attacker wants to do”. It is more common to see malicious code to be implemented in binary executable files. However, it can be implemented in almost any computer language. Attackers have used a huge number of scripting languages, word processing macro languages and a h...
Virus is one of the most common malware. Unlike spyware, virus is largely designed to harm useful programs or wreck down an entire operating system. There are many ways through which virus may enter a computer. The most common way is via email attachments. A...
In today’s days malware is designated as a software which aims to disturb a computer with the consent or permission of the owner. This term “Malware” is used by computer professionals to describe a varied forms of destructive, annoying and intrusive software code. This word “Malware” is used to indicate all types of malware which include a true set of viruses.
Cybercrime refers to all forms of crime conducted through a computer or a mobile device using computer networks. It is thus the use of a computer with the aim of intercepting and manipulating content, disrupting communication, stealing or generally destroying others’ information or hardware through a network. Although cybercrime is a worldwide problem and affects both small and big companies, small companies are affected more from the dangers of cybercrime. The rapid advancement in technology is causing tremendous problems to businesses in terms of more sophisticated cyber-attacks. This project is interesting and beneficial because it enlightens one on the dangers of cybercrime, thus preparing individuals to know how to prevent attacks while online, how to reduce the effects of a cyber-attack and how to prevent future
As the internet has evolved it is now a part of many people’s daily lives and with that, many could not function or conduct their daily business or lives without it. It is impressive that we can now communicate and even see someone all the way across the country with just a few clicks of a mouse. But as technology changes and progresses seemingly for the good, many will always find ways to exploit technology and use it with the intent of committing crime, turning a positive tool into a negative one. As such the negative side of the World Wide Web, cybercrime has evolved as just one of the major disadvantages of the internet. Cybercrime itself is a broad term and can and does include any crime that is committed via the internet or computer network including seemingly minor acts as downloading music, to denial of service attacks, to even acts of cyber-terrorism. With the newly formed threat of cybercrime has also come new ways for law enforcement to attack and prevent it as well but with limited resources not much can be changed but to continue to prevent new methods from approaching the cybercrime world. This is not only just in our own neighborhoods but is at an international scale. This paper generates the insight about the overall rise of cybercrime among our societies. The main focus of this paper is to describe the types of computer crimes and its effects on individuals and businesses.
There are different groups, from law enforcement agencies to the U.S. Secret Service, that are attempting to combat the problem through cooperation and preemptive efforts. If these groups combined with the public to protect themselves and the country from criminals that commit cybercrime, the nation’s network and technology servers would be much safer for technology users. Clearly, cybercrime is a problem because it puts internet users at risk of being taken advantage of or harmed. The advantages of technology and the internet have led more criminals to use cyberspace to commit crimes. The threat of cybercrime is increasing as globalization continues to spread across the world.