4 Jan 2012 ~ PCCare247.com PCCare247.com Blog, PC Care 247 Tech Support Redefined

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Fizzled out computer Viruses leave a lasting impact in the IT world


Antivirus Support
Not all viruses are bad!! For the present security scenario is in reality an offshoot of fizzled out viruses etching a solid foundation for inception of new age security systems and applications. Yes, even though nowhere near the potency level of the Sasser, MyDoom or Storm Worm, these viruses were developed with the sole aim of creating a self-replicating program rather than one leading to a data loss.

Creeper
Brought to life in 1971 by BBN employee Bob Thomas, the creeper virus is considered as the very first example of a computer worm. Self-replicating in nature and non-destructive to data, Creeper was initially designed for testing the effectiveness of any code. Technically not considered to be a virus due to its rather passive nature, Creeper never ever ended up taking advantage of an exploit on the DEC PDP-10 TENEX systems it came into contact with.

Elk Cloner
Discovered in 1981 by Rich Skrenta, the Elk Cloner is considered to be the world’s first boot sector virus. The virus was first discovered in floppy disks used for booting up the OS, thus leaving it highly vulnerable to attacks. And from here on at any point in time, if a user was to end up booting the OS from an infected floppy, the virus eventually ended up copying itself into a computer’s memory. Whilst the code was not malicious in its orientation, the user would always end up seeing a poem on the 50th boot. Another first scored by the virus was not only did it specifically target the boot sector but it also ended up spreading itself in the wild i.e. outside an environment it was originally written in.

Brain
Amongst the very first computer virus to be written in 1986 for MS-DOS, the Brain ended up affecting floppy disks, more specifically the boot sector of the DOS File Allocation Table (FAT). It did so by moving the real boot sector elsewhere and marking it as “bad”. Once done, a copy of the virus replaced the real boot sector but hard drives were specifically avoided.

SCA
Another first, the SCA was written in 1987 by the “Swiss Cracking Association” or “Mega-Mighty SCA”. The group mostly specialized in removing copy protection from floppies and enabling the SCA target the boot sector of write-enabled disks. The virus not only affected write-enabled floppies but also ruined custom boot blocks used by games. The SCA virus eventually also led the same group to release a first of its kind Amiga virus scanner for removing the infection.

Morris Worm
With a source code preserved on a dusty floppy in the Boston Museum of Science, the Morris Worm is amongst the most famous outbreaks in history – overtly due to a mistake made by its author. In fact, the Morris worm was the first to spread via the Internet and was known to exploit known vulnerabilities in the UNIX operating system. The worm discovered in 1988 in spite of not being considered to be malicious tried to gather information about the size of the Internet. But then what made the worm such an issue was its method of spreading, re-infecting every 1 in 7 PC claiming to be already infected.

Leap
Leap, also sometimes known as the Oompa-Loompa virus was the first to infect Apple’s cherished OS. Not a full-blown outbreak, the virus didn’t get transferred via Internet. At the same time, it also ended up proving no matter how tight the security is there are always going to be potential vulnerabilities. Leap as a virus would always be considered to amongst low threat viruses, albeit at the same time a world-changing one. antivirus.pccare247.com/

Four Knights in shining armor ready to defend your PC 24X7


Spyware RemovalThe yearning for openness and ease of access ends up coming with a price. And precisely it is this same need for having the world at our fingertips has led to an exponential increase in cyber crime. With each new advance, criminals and rogue nation states are getting emboldened with opportunities to steal, manipulate, disrupt and destroy.

But not the one to sit back and relax in an effort to thwart these attacks, the security industry has delivered a range of technologies. Whilst, many of such technologies offer limited benefits and have been quickly shelved, others have gone on to become a de facto standard for sprucing up security in any organizational setup.

But then again no matter how big the contingency would be there are four knights which are always willing to defend an organization even in the most contingent scenarios. Popularly comprising of:
·         Firewalls
·         Intrusion Prevention Products
·         Anti Virus Software
·         Web Gateways

Gearing up to mount an effective defense at your behest
All PC users know an effective defense against an incoming threat would go a long way in keeping their PC up and running. So, in this regards, as it goes what better way would be there do the same than to spruce up the defenses by means of anything but:

Firewalls
Firewalls are configured with the sole purpose of strictly limiting which systems can communicate with internal systems and what ports could be used for communications. They shield systems and services not generally considered as accessible and otherwise known to be vulnerable. However, in spite of being considered as a necessity for most organizations, firewalls are completely blind when it comes to preventing any targeted and zero-day malware attacks.

Network Intrusion Prevention Systems
Network intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and intrusion detection systems (IDS) have been developed to address any firewall’s visibility and granularity limitations. To filter out attacks, IPS solutions inspect network communications and try to understand various application data being transmitted. Earlier IDS solutions performed passive monitoring, thoroughly analyzed network traffic and identified attacks based on signatures of known exploits. But then again as IDS morphed into IPS, these solutions could not prevent attacks in which signatures ended up matching a known exploit.

Antivirus
Every antivirus application ends up maintaining a large database of known threats. Should at any time a signature of a threat be identified on a system file, it quarantines or removes that file. Here once again, security teams would be required to use a reactive solution for identifying threats well in advance. But then again somewhere down the line as advanced malware and other threats increasingly focused on unknown threats and became more dynamic, an antivirus solution became completely redundant in combating such threats.

Web Gateways
While Web gateways provided some initial security value, attackers have shifted tactics. They have moved to completely dynamic and obfuscated models of both attack delivery and malware communication, rendering lists of malicious Web sites obsolete. Consequently, just as Web gateways started to be widely adopted, they became outmoded from a security perspective. While these technologies still have utility in enforcing HR policies limiting employee Web browsing, in combating modern attacks, Web gateways have been relegated to an increasingly marginal security role. Then again the same is also true of antivirus and other technologies due to a radical shift in tactics adopted cyber criminals.

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