Overview
In the following report, “computer viruses” will be explained in detail. A lengthy and informative description of the evolution and history on microcomputer viruses will be given, to give you a background of their origin for some understanding of how they came to be.
The next segment in the report is on how to combat computer viruses with the development of anti-virus applications.
The current status of microcomputer viruses will also be discussed, naming the most common types of viruses and the most harmful type at this present point in time.
Details of the most recent outbreaks of computer viruses, such as the “Melissa”, “I Love You” and the most recent “Anna Kournikova” viruses will be explained, and why they are so harmful.
I will also give you my recommendations on how to combat this threat of computer viruses, what Anti-virus Applications that I believe should be used, and why updating your virus definitions for these programs on a regular basis is so vital and important in your quest to have a happy and uninfected computer.
And finally, I give you my conclusion in which I can only hope that you will find helpful.
A History Of Computer Viruses
The term “Virus” was not used to describe a self-replicating computer program until the American electrical engineer named “Fred Cohen” associated the term with it in 1983.
In the 1950’s at Bell Laboratories, “John von Neumann’s” theory in which he made in 1949 was put to the test. His theory stated that it was (MS Encarta 98, Virus [computer], History) “Theoretically possible for a computer program to replicate”. His theory was tested after a game called “Core Wars” was developed whereby (MS Encarta 98, Virus [computer], History) “Players created tiny computer programs that attacked, erased, and tried to propagate on an opponent’s system”.
In the late 1960’s through to the early 1970’s, the program called “The Rabbit” was constantly appearing on the mainframes at the time. Kaspersky (www.avp.ch) “These programs cloned themselves, occupied system resources, thus lowering the productivity of the system”. These viruses were only localised, as they did not spread from one system to another and are thought to have only been pranks or mistakes by programmers.
The “Univac 1108” and “IBM 360/370” systems were infected with one of the first known computer viruses, “Pervading Animal”. This virus attached itself to executable files, which damaged the infected file.
In 1986 the first stealth virus hit IBM Compatible PC’s, called the “BRAIN” virus.
The conclusion should be written out word for word. The conclusion should contain the following objectives:
I will be making a summary of my comments in a brief conclusion at the
date with the latest software and security patches. Reputable antivirus programs such as Norton Security, McAfee Antivirus, and Bitdefender Antivirus and firewall programs should be installed and kept up to date for maximum protection.
To conclude I have tried to answer each section as best I can. I have
Multi-platform computer worms are a tool that computer hackers use to infect computers to gain control access. Computer worms are a dangerous virus because they are self-replicating, meaning that they multiply themselves and spread onto other computer networks seeking a lapse in internet security. Computer worms do not need to attach themselves onto an existing computer program to gain access to the victim computer files. The computer worm was created on accident by a Cornell student named Robert Morris; he was seeking a way of managing the internet in 1988. “Morris had no malicious intent, but a bug in his program caused many of the computers the worm landed on to crash. … but worms had come of age and have since evolved into an effective way of attacking systems connected to the internet” (Barwise). Today, hackers use the Morris worm to infect computers. “Five men believed to be responsible for spreading a notorious computer worm on Facebook and other social networks — and pocketing several million dollars from online schemes — are hiding in plain sight in St. Petersburg, Russia …” (Richmond). Since the good intended creation of the worm it has only been used maliciously as a computer virus by money seeking computer hackers such as the Koobface gang in Russia.
In conclusion, From all the points I have brought up it is easy to see that
the end of this paper I will show how I come to this conclusion. First I will tell the story in my
Living as royalty in Hungary and dividing eight-digit numbers in his head before age six, it was only a matter of time before John Von Neumann would go on to create some of the world’s most important economic theories and mathematical models (Poundstone, 1992; Burks, 1966). Neumann not only founded the study of game theory, but was also the first man to create a self-replicating machine without the use of a computer (Burks). These achievements also led to his principal membership in the Manhattan Project, one of the most globally influential scientific initiatives (Regis, 1992). John Von Neumann’s story is one of intense intellectual curiosity, and his achievements are nothing short of fascinating.
analysis in this essay I will be able to come to a conclusion as to
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.
“ Prevention is better than cure ”, if computer users are aware of Malware attacks, they may prevent those attacks . So, in this research paper i am going to focus on Malware and Protecting Against Malware.
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...
“A digital world we became”. These days individuals turned to use computer systems in everything in their lives. They even use them in manufacturer instead of employees. I did not say that technological innovation is not essential for us but sometimes the technological innovation disregards our role in life. Technological innovation is very essential to any lifestyle to flourish. Technology contains cell mobile phones, laptops, machines, Ipads and many other factors. Not also they include all the excellent stuff but any great factor comes out with a drawback. Technological innovation has some drawbacks, and the most essential one of them that we will mainly talk about is the malware.
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.