Tuesday, August 12, 2008
New Virus Spread
Posted by Samer on 9:46 PM
VERY IMPORTANT WARNING !!!!!! Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. Please send it to everybody you know who accesses the Internet.You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point presentation " Life is beautiful. pps ". If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES , and delete it immediately. if you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: " It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful ", subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you gain access to your name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus ! which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon WE NEED TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO STOP THIS VIRUS.
AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus Software's are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself " life owner ". PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY
AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus Software's are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself " life owner ". PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY
What is Virus?
Posted by Samer on 7:26 PM
Definition of Virus:-
A Virus is a small program that embeds itself into other programs. When those other programs are executed, the virus is also executed, and attempts to copy itself into more programs. In this way, it spreads in a manner similar to a biological virus.
viruses, by definition, can "infect" any executable code. Accordingly, they are found on floppy and hard disk boot sectors, executable programs, macro languages and executable electronic mail attachments.
viruses can be found using a Virus Scanner or a Virus Wall. Some software products are also available to remove them with a minimum of harm to the "infected" files.
Some viruses are self-modifying, in order to make detection more difficult. Such viruses are called polymorphic.
viruses, by definition, can "infect" any executable code. Accordingly, they are found on floppy and hard disk boot sectors, executable programs, macro languages and executable electronic mail attachments.
viruses can be found using a Virus Scanner or a Virus Wall. Some software products are also available to remove them with a minimum of harm to the "infected" files.
Some viruses are self-modifying, in order to make detection more difficult. Such viruses are called polymorphic.
A program or piece of code that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes. Viruses can also replicate themselves. All computer viruses are manmade. A simple virus that can make a copy of itself over and over again is relatively easy to produce. Even such a simple virus is dangerous because it will quickly use all available memory and bring the system to a halt. An even more dangerous type of virus is one capable of transmitting itself across networks and bypassing security systems.
Dr. Cohen's definition of a computer virus as "A program that can 'infect' other programs by modifying them to include a ... version of itself" is generally accepted as a standard. On occasion it presents problems with the acceptance of, say, boot sector viral programs and entities such as the Internet/UNIX/Morris worm. However, his work did experimentally demonstrate and theoretically prove many vital issues.
What is the history of Viruses?
Posted by Samer on 6:43 PM
History:-
1986 - Brain, PC-Write Trojan, & Virdem
The common story is that two brothers from Pakistan analyzed the boot sector of a floppy disk and developed a method of infecting it with a virus dubbed ''Brain'' (the origin is generally accepted but not absolutely). Because it spread widely on the popular MS-DOS PC system this is typically called the first computer virus; even though it was predated by Cohen's experiments and the Apple II virus. That same year the first PC-based Trojan was released in the form of the popular shareware program PC-Write. Some reports say Virdem was also found this year; it is often called the first file virus.
1987 - File Infectors, Lehigh, & Christmas Worm
The first file viruses started to appear. Most concentrated on COM files; COMMAND.COM in particular. The first of these to infect COMMAND.COM is typically reported to be the Lehigh virus. At this time other work was done to create the first EXE infector: Suriv-02(Suriv = Virus backward). (This virus evolved into the Jerusalem virus.) A fast-spreading (500,000 replications per hour) worm hit IBM mainframes during this year: the IBM Christmas Worm.
1988 - MacMag, Scores, & Internet Worm
MacMAg, a Hypercard stack virus on the Macintosh is generally considered the first Macintosh virus and the Scores virus was the source of the first major Macintosh outbreak. The Internet Worm (Robert Morris' creation in November) causes the first Internet crisis and shut down many computers. CERT is created to respond to such attacks.
1989 - AIDS Trojan
This Trojan is famous for holding data hostage. The Trojan was sent out under the guise of an AIDS information program. When run it encrypted the user's hard drive and demanded payment for the decryption key.
1990 - VX BBS & Little Black Book (AT&T Attack)
The first virus exchange (VX) BBS went online in Bulgaria. Here virus authors could trade code and exchange ideas. Also, in 1990, Mark Ludwig's book on virus writing (The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses) was published. While there is no proof, hackers are suspected of taking down the AT&T long-distance switching system.
1991 - Tequila
Tequila was the first polymorphic virus; it came out of Switzerland and changed itself in an attempt to avoid detection.
1992 - Michelangelo, DAME, & VCL
Michelangelo was the first media darling. A wordwide alert went out with claims of massive damage predicted. Actually, little happened. The same year the Dark Avengar Mutation Engine (DAME) became the first toolkit that could be used to turn any virus into a polymorphic virus. Also that year the Virus Creation Laboratory(VCL) became the first actual virus creation kit. It had pull-down menus and selectable payloads (though it's reported to not have worked very well).
1993 - Stealth_boot PMBS
Stealth boot PMBS used a unique technique to operate. You caught it by booting from an infected floppy disk. Once installed, Stealth_Boot would install itself in extended memory, switched the computer into protected mode, and then ran a virtual V86 machine which DOS and programs would use. Basically, the virus existed between the operating system and the hardware.
1995 - Year of the Hacker
Hackers attacked Griffith Air Force Base, the Korean Atomic Research Institute, NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. GE, IBM, Pipeline and other companies were all hit by the "Internet Liberation Front".
1995 - Concept
The common story is that two brothers from Pakistan analyzed the boot sector of a floppy disk and developed a method of infecting it with a virus dubbed ''Brain'' (the origin is generally accepted but not absolutely). Because it spread widely on the popular MS-DOS PC system this is typically called the first computer virus; even though it was predated by Cohen's experiments and the Apple II virus. That same year the first PC-based Trojan was released in the form of the popular shareware program PC-Write. Some reports say Virdem was also found this year; it is often called the first file virus.
1987 - File Infectors, Lehigh, & Christmas Worm
The first file viruses started to appear. Most concentrated on COM files; COMMAND.COM in particular. The first of these to infect COMMAND.COM is typically reported to be the Lehigh virus. At this time other work was done to create the first EXE infector: Suriv-02(Suriv = Virus backward). (This virus evolved into the Jerusalem virus.) A fast-spreading (500,000 replications per hour) worm hit IBM mainframes during this year: the IBM Christmas Worm.
1988 - MacMag, Scores, & Internet Worm
MacMAg, a Hypercard stack virus on the Macintosh is generally considered the first Macintosh virus and the Scores virus was the source of the first major Macintosh outbreak. The Internet Worm (Robert Morris' creation in November) causes the first Internet crisis and shut down many computers. CERT is created to respond to such attacks.
1989 - AIDS Trojan
This Trojan is famous for holding data hostage. The Trojan was sent out under the guise of an AIDS information program. When run it encrypted the user's hard drive and demanded payment for the decryption key.
1990 - VX BBS & Little Black Book (AT&T Attack)
The first virus exchange (VX) BBS went online in Bulgaria. Here virus authors could trade code and exchange ideas. Also, in 1990, Mark Ludwig's book on virus writing (The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses) was published. While there is no proof, hackers are suspected of taking down the AT&T long-distance switching system.
1991 - Tequila
Tequila was the first polymorphic virus; it came out of Switzerland and changed itself in an attempt to avoid detection.
1992 - Michelangelo, DAME, & VCL
Michelangelo was the first media darling. A wordwide alert went out with claims of massive damage predicted. Actually, little happened. The same year the Dark Avengar Mutation Engine (DAME) became the first toolkit that could be used to turn any virus into a polymorphic virus. Also that year the Virus Creation Laboratory(VCL) became the first actual virus creation kit. It had pull-down menus and selectable payloads (though it's reported to not have worked very well).
1993 - Stealth_boot PMBS
Stealth boot PMBS used a unique technique to operate. You caught it by booting from an infected floppy disk. Once installed, Stealth_Boot would install itself in extended memory, switched the computer into protected mode, and then ran a virtual V86 machine which DOS and programs would use. Basically, the virus existed between the operating system and the hardware.
1995 - Year of the Hacker
Hackers attacked Griffith Air Force Base, the Korean Atomic Research Institute, NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. GE, IBM, Pipeline and other companies were all hit by the "Internet Liberation Front".
1995 - Concept
The first macro virus to attack Word, Concept, was developed.
