Rodrigo Duarte Favarini Silva
EC-Council University
ECCU 516 – The Hacker Mind: Profiling the IT Criminal!
Worms and viruses that have disturbed the cyber world from 1970’s to 2000’s
Kaspersky (1999) lists three viruses famous on the 1970s. Creeper was the first one able to spread itself in the ARPANET showing a message on infected systems (Bosworth, Kabay & Whyne, 2004). The Rabbit had the main function to multiply itself and slow down a system (Dupont, 2019). The ANIMAL had instructions to self-install in all the directories of the computer whenever the CPU loses the game (Dupont, 2019).
The 1980’s was marked by the popularization of trojan-horses and worms (Kaspersky, 1999). Elk Cloner was the first large scale computer virus that targeted APPLE II, spread over floppy disks (Dupont, 2019). Morris was considered the first significant worm, indirectly causing a huge DoS attack. The Brain, in 1986, was the first IBM (DOS) virus that infected the boot sector of floppy disks (Kaspersky, 1999).
Between 1990 and 2000, macro viruses frequently infected the Office suite files and usually were developed in VBS (Kaspersky, 1999). Michelangelo was a virus and a logic-bomb that every year on March 6th, overwritten the 100 first sectors on storage devices. CIH infected 60 million MS-Windows 9x destroying the BIOS firmware (Kaspersky, 1999) also, the Melissa, a fast-spreading macro-virus that infected the Office files and sent itself to the first 50 Outlook contacts (Poulsen, 2001).
The 2000’s was a decade marked by the proliferation of worms and DDoS attacks provoked by them. “I Love You” was the first work that infected millions of computers using a message based on social engineering (Dupont, 2019). Nimda slowed down thousands of internet servers using a windows vulnerability and a backdoor opened by another worm, the CodeRed II to spread (Kaspersky, 1999). 2004 was the year of DDoS attacks facilitated by three worms: Netsky, MyDoom and Sasser and all of them exploited a particular windows vulnerability and were able to receive external commands (Dupont, 2019). The Conficker was a worm created to build a Botnet and has its position in a hall of fame as the largest computer worm infection of 2000’s (Markoff, 2009).
References
Bosworth, S., & Kabay, Whyne, E. (2004). Computer security handbook. John Wiley & Sons.
Dupont, J. (2019). A History of Major Computer Viruses from the 1970s to the Present [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blog.devolutions.net/2019/04/a-history-of-major-computer-viruses-from-the-1970s-to-the-present
Kaspersky Labs, C. (1999). All Threats. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20061016141708/http:/www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?chapter=153310937
Leyden, J. (2006). PC virus celebrates 20th birthday. Retrieved from https://www.theregister.com/2006/01/19/pc_virus_at_20/
Markoff, J. (2009). Worm Infects Millions of Computers Worldwide. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/technology/internet/23worm.html
Poulsen, K. (2001). Justice mysteriously delayed for ‘Melissa’ author. Retrieved from https://www.theregister.com/2001/08/01/justice_mysteriously_delayed_for_melissa/
Stallings, William (2012). Computer security : principles and practice. Boston: Pearson.
Symantec Security Center, (2019). Difference between viruses, worms, and trojans. Retrieved from https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=tech98539
Zhang, Changwang; Zhou, Shi; Chain, Benjamin M. (2015). Hybrid epidemics – A case study on computer worm Conficker. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0127478.