Computer Parasites & Remedies
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Couputer Parazsife9 ^me(igs gl Catafogue of 'FirstSigfltin s of RseaC &. Omaginoars 'Betins - Corinne Cnutlemn Wagts itusrr4rdyJ3. STbQns VIRUSES tect and "kill" creepers. (The messages began appearing on the Viruses, in their simplest form, Cincinnati Post, Feb. 1, 1988) ARPAnet. Status messages are nor- just replicate themselves. A slight- Rabbit - One of the first known mally broadcast from each node ly more advanced virus not only viruses, first sighted in 1974 by of the network to relay their read- duplicates a program but renames Bill Kennedy. When Rabbit was iness to handle new data. Each each one slightly differently. More introduced into a system, it copied node then propagates copies of sophisticated viruses erase files, itself and continued to toss the incoming status messages to other scramble memory, turn off the copies back into the input job- nodes in an ongoing determina- power, or do any/all of these things stream (the place where programs tion of the optimal path for the with a time delay, called a time start). This slowed the communi- electronic traffic. Status messages bomb. Some viruses "burn a hole" cation between the input job- are supposed to be trashed im- somewhere so that a certain com- stream and its console (teletype mediately afterward, but in this mand will do something else, i.e., where system operator sees what's case the message from a parti- given an addition command the going on), which made Rabbit cular node somewhere near Los program subtracts instead. harder to kill the longer it ran. Angeles became mutated. Its con- (comp.risks [an electronic journal taminated form caused a "garbage Creeper - Possibly the first collector" malfunction in the re- known virus, first sighted in 1970. on the Usenet network], Mar. 29, 1988). ceiving nodes. No messages could Built by Bob Thomas of BBN, it be thrown out, thus saturating the Pervading Animal was a demonstration program that - An early nodes. Yet the nodes continued to proto-virus attached crawled through ARPAnet, a na- to a Univac propagate waves of this debilitating 1108 game program tionwide Pentagon-funded net- called Animal. message, infecting others which While the user was playing work linking university, military the couldn't dump the infected mes- and corporate computers, spring- game, Pervading Animal copied sage, until it spread throughout ing up on computer terminals itself into every write-enabled the whole network like cancer program with the message, "I'm the file available. (Mike Van and ground it to a halt. It was 72 Pelt, comp.risks creeper, catch me if you can!" Mar. 29, 1988.) hours before technicians could A version of Creeper done by Ray Smart Virus - In the book The revive it. (Software Engineering Tomlinson not only Inoved through Adolescence of P-1 (Thomas J. Notes, Jan. 1981.) the net, but also replicated itself Ryan, Collier Books, 1977), there 2600 VAX Virus - This one at times. is an example of an intelligent, replicates itself, sends jobs con- Reaper - In response to Creeper, information-hunting virus. tinuously to the batch queue this virus also jumped through the ARPAnet Data Virus - On Oc- (where programs line up, waiting network, but it proceeded to de- tober 27, 1980, multiple "status" to be run). All that happens is the 27 GATEFIVE ROAD SAUSAUTO CA 9496S I 07 71(3 Queue might overflow. (2600, come to the dungeon ... Beware response on the 13th of any month, Aug. 1986, vol. 3, no. 8.) of this VIRUS. Contact us for vac- it would also put garbage on the Elk Cloner Virus - First sighted cination." The message includes screen from time to time. What in 1981 or. 1982, this one runs on the address and phone number of called attention to the virus was the Apple II family. It inserts itself Brain Computer Services, a com- an error in the virus code itself, into the DOS operating system. puter company in Lahore, Pakistan, which caused it to mistake pre- Elk Cloner hooks into the RUN, and the names of two brothers, viously infected programs as un- LOAD, BLOAD, and CATALOG Basit and Amjad. infected. In error, it would add commands to make them check The virus markssome disk sectors another copy of itself to the pro- the accessed program disk and as bad.'It modifies several com- gram. Some programs were in- infect it. It prints a poem: mand files, maybe all of them fected as many as 400 times and the growth in The)Program with a personality eventually, without changing file size of the program was noticeable. This It will get on all your disks sizes or dates. Even if the boot one was dis- covered before It will infiltrate your chips sector is rewritten, the virus re- D-day, but it had infected home, university, Yes, it's cloned mains active through the command and military computers before It will stick to you files it modified. No known cure. it like glue was detected. It will modify Ram too (comp.risks, Apr. 5, 1988.) MaclnVirus - First known en- Send in the cloned This is the first virus to infect an counter by David Spector. This (comp.risks, Apr. 26, 1988 by American newspaper's computer virus was written by a West Ger- Phil Goetz) system (The Providence Journal- man and posted to CompuServe Finger Virus - A speculative Bulletin). When the phone number in a HyperCard stack. The virus virus that would go out replicating in Pakistan, was called, the person is disguised as a resource that until it found a specific person. who answered expressed surprise inserts itself in a system trap Then it would send that person's that the virus had travelled so far handler (the place where the e-mail address back to its creator. - and refused to give his last computer catches errors so they (Fred Hapgood, First Artificial name. (New York Times, May Life won't cause system crashes). The Conference, Sept. 1987). 25, 1988.) virus destroys hard disks and the Lehigh Virus - First sighted Nov. Amiga Virus - This one is a applications that run on them. 25, 1987 by Jeffrey Carpenter, simple modification of the Amiga (comp.risks, Jan. 10, 1988.) boot block. On an Amiga floppy posted on Usenet. It attached it- "Good" Virus - Written the boot block consists of the first by a self to a few lines of the operating West German programmer, two sectors on the disk. Normally this system used on the IBM PCs that virus won't let it contains a small bit of code "unknown" pro- Lehigh University provides for stu- grams run on one's that loads and initializes the DOS machine. If dent use. It is a corruption of a le- the programs when it is "booted" or turned to be run aren't gitimate program, Command.Com, already infected on. Some commercial software with THIS virus, the basic boot-up file of MS-DOS they won't be packages and games store special allowed to run at and PC-DOS. The virus destroys all. (comp.risks, Jan. 10, 1988.) data on floppies and hard disks by information in the boot block. writing zeros to the first thirty-two Since the virus overwrites this, the sectors of a disk (which erases the information is lost forever. After directory kept in the first couple a certain number of disks have been of tracks), making the data un- infected the virus will recoverable. print a message: , It spreads when a clean PC is "Something wonderful booted from an infected disk and has happened. the user accesses a second, un- Your Amiga is alivell infected program disk with the and even better ' resident commands: TYPE, COPY, Some of your disks are infecte DIR, CHDIR, ERASE, MKDIR, by a VIRUS RMDIR, VERIFY. The virus waits Another masterpiece of the until it has been copied four times Mega-Mighty SCA" before it wipes out the data on (comp.risks, Dec. 7, 1987.) the disk on which it resides. Israeli Virus-- First sighted by © Brain Virus - First sighted Yuval Rakavy, a student at Hebn Fall, 1987 at the University of Del- University; first mentioned pub- aware. It changes the volume label lically in Maariv, one of Israel's (the given name) of a floppy or daily newspapers, Jan. 8, 1988. hard disk to © Brain. The boot Designed to begin destroying fil record contains a message: "Wel- on May 13, and to slow comput 1 08 WHOLE EARTH REVIEW FALL 1988 2-4141 this virus is to print all your files the virus resources have been onto paper, erase all the disks on deleted, but they have been re- your system, buy fresh software named and will return when the disks from the manufacturer, and Mac is restarted. type in all your data again. But Apparently, the virus doesn't FIRSTI send this message to every- attempt to spread itself over one you know, so that they will networks. also protect themselves. The Scores virus causes printing This virus took Jeff Mogul tvo problems, system crashes, appli- minutes to produce and he didn't cation crashes on launch, and even have to write any code. damaged Excel files. Scores Virus - First sighting MacMag Virus - First sighted mentioned in MacWeek, Apr. 12, by Chris Borton Mar. 8, 1988 and 1988. In existence since at least posted to comp.risks on Usenet. February, and possibly since as First mentioned in print in the early as September 1987. It in- Toronto Star March 16, 1988. The filtrated several government agen- virus was launched in December cies, Apple sales offices, and the 1987 by Richard Brandow, pub- Mac of an unidentified senator, lisher of MacMag magazine in as well as MacWorld and Mac- Montreal, Canada.