Where Do Viruses Come From?

Martyr · 04-04-2007 03:22PM

mick.fr wrote:

A virus, just for your information, is a piece of software that aims to destroy data.
Cyber criminals do not aim at destroying data, their purpose is to gather data and financially exploit it.

some definitions i found online were:

A dangerous computer program with the characteristic feature of being able to generate copies of itself, and thereby spreading. Additionally most computer viruses have a destructive payload that is activated under certain conditions.

A computer program with the ability to modify other programs usually to the determent of the computer system.

A computer virus is a self-replicating program containing code that explicitly copies itself and can "infect" other programs by modifying them or their environment such that a call to an infected program implies a call to a (possibly evolved) copy of the virus. More on viruses

*most* have destructive payloads?..i dispute this, based on source code i've read..i can only think of 1 person who wrote destructive payloads and his code was for ms-dos exclusively..so it didn't even apply.

i'm not saying destructive payloads don't exist, but they would be quite rare these days.

name *one* boot infector viruses for win32? nada
i'm sure there are variants based on chernobyl virus that tried to erase bios/hard drive..but these only worked in win9x systems, not relevant today.

i'm losing track of topic, but can't we just refer to someone stealing identities, capturing keystrokes for profit as just a criminal?
ok, they can do some programming on a computer, so what? why call those people "hackers" or "crackers" because they steal just like any other common crook?

in these discussions nobody ever agrees!

Skalragg · 04-04-2007 05:51PM

mick.fr wrote:

A virus, just for your information, is a piece of software that aims to destroy data.

I have to completely disagree with you

The term virus comes from the term virus in biology. A computer virus reproduces by making, possibly modified, copies of itself in the computer's memory, storage, or over a network. This is similar to the way a biological virus works. As im sure you know unlike biological viruses tho, computer viruses do not simply evolve by themselves or come into existence spontaneously, nor are they likely to be created by bugs in regular programs. They are deliberately created by programmers, or by people who use virus creation software. Computer viruses can only do what the programmers have programmed them to do.

A computer virus is informally defined as

"A self-replicating segment of executable computer code embedded within a host program"

Yes , SOME viruses are programmed to release a destructive payload on their victims, however they are only one of many types of virus types out there,

Trojan horses, Worms , Logic bombs, Backdoors, Self-encrypting viruses etc etc perform different tasks.....they do what they have been programmed to do....but most definetely they are all not created to destroy data, worms for eg, are network viruses who unlike "standard" viruses,it does not require a host program, but is a stand-alone executable program. Some viruses are used to aid in breaking into a system, while others are used to steal information.......

so to say

A virus, just for your information, is a piece of software that aims to destroy data.

is just inaccurate imo

Two good books on viruses

A Pathology of Computer Viruses - David Ferbrache
The Art of Computer Virus Research and Defence - Peter Szor

mick.fr · 04-04-2007 09:33PM

You guys should better get your sources elsewhere than the first result page of Google.
A virus is not necessary replicating itself, and this is actually rarely the case.
A single virus can infect several files/partitions, fair enough, but this is not replication, this is propagation.

Why ?

Because this is bloody complicated to program and it involves lots of factors than has to be common. It is much easier to spam thousands of email addresses with a virus or even to send it as an activex or so.

There are all sort of viruses, and I say it again the aim of viruses is to destroy or corrupt data, system file whatever.
Although some of them were pretty harmless, like just showing some Windows popup very often etc...

The aim of a virus is not to spy what you do on your computer and send a dump back to a server. This is another type of threat and has another name :-)

This was my all point. Viruses threat is very low, and it is getting lower years after years.

Capt'n Midnight · 04-04-2007 10:14PM

mick.fr wrote:

Viruses is not as a big threat anymore as the spyware/malware/spam/phishing/social engineering are nowdays.[/url]

Suppose someone had written an email virus that sent out .ani .cur or .ico files during the last 3 months ?

ILOVEYOU was destructive, thankfully none of the recent viruses were, but I reckon it's only a matter of time before politically motivated person or group might try some cyber terrorism.

There are fewer computer manufacturers than before, fewer hard driver manufacturers, so the idea of mis-flashing the BIOS on 10% of the world's PC's or reprogramming the controller on some of the most popular hard drives is not science fiction. you can erase 256 sectors at a time or apply a password or issue a security erase unit command and then change the microcode too http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/d1153r17.pdf
Shouldn't be too difficult to generate a generic app to trash flash

I keep referring to the saphire worm, infecting 90% of it's target hosts in 10 minutes, just imagine it was as destructive as the Bulgarian viruses back in the 80's that allegedly caused the stepper motor on the drive head to keep stepping or to overdrive monitors.

Worst case scenario we are half an hour away from millions of computers becoming paper weights. The risk of this happening are low, but the consequences aren't.

Capt'n Midnight · 04-04-2007 10:24PM

mick.fr wrote:

A virus is not necessary replicating itself, and this is actually rarely the case.

Please tell that to the anti-virus companies.

They charge extra to clean non-replicating programs and other malware. (stuff that most home users would consider viruses )

I would consider propogation to other machines without needing human intervention to be a defining characteristic of a virus. It's not as easy to make money out of a virus as from spambots, if you blackmail someone with a DoS they may come looking for you :eek:

ActorSeeksJob · 04-04-2007 10:32PM

root kits are gonna be the main future security problem. generally viruses can be dealt with easily enough, root kits on the other hand can be an extreme headache. Will be interesting to see how they turn out in a few years.

ecksor · 04-04-2007 10:41PM

mick.fr wrote:

You guys should better get your sources elsewhere than the first result page of Google.

What is your source?

The closest definition I have to hand is:

Definition 22-4 A computer virus is a program that inserts itself into one or more files and then performs some (possibly null) action.

From Computer Security; Art and Science by Matt Bishop, Page 616.

Note the bit in brackets.

A virus is not necessary replicating itself, and this is actually rarely the case. A single virus can infect several files/partitions, fair enough, but this is not replication, this is propagation.

Er? Are you saying that it propagates without replicating itself?

There are all sort of viruses, and I say it again the aim of viruses is to destroy or corrupt data, system file whatever.

This is your opinion, and quite different to claiming that a virus necessarily is created for that motive.

Although some of them were pretty harmless, like just showing some Windows popup very often etc...

How does this reconcile with your earlier statement,

A virus, just for your information, is a piece of software that aims to destroy data.

The aim of a virus is not to spy what you do on your computer and send a dump back to a server. This is another type of threat and has another name :-)

I don't think these things are orthogonal.

Black Swan · 12-04-2007 06:16AM

mathias wrote:

The comment about pre-teen american brats was not speculation at all and comes from a well known case that IBM had to deal with , upon investigating the source , it was found that it was impossible to prosecute due to age , however he was stopped , because two guys from IBM dropped around to the house and told his Mother what he was doing !!
Thats true!

That case is used as an example in most of IBM's computer security seminars by the way !

This one case exemplifies and ID's the source of most viruses? I am sure that the pre-teens, teens, and bored young hacking/cracking adults around the world will be relieved to know that they are not to blame for the spread of viruses, worms, trojans, RATS, and other related malware, spyware, adware, and spam. Oh, and it's wonderful to be Irish and not American, knowing that none of my countrymen/women would ever write malicious code, even if they were wrongfully terminated or laid-off from the computer software corporation they once worked for.

OP: You might want to offer more choices than just two in your survey?

Where Do Viruses Come From?

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