{"id":6277,"date":"2011-06-25T19:16:01","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T23:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2021-07-18T17:30:47","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T21:30:47","slug":"malware-history-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/malware-history-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"40 Years of Malware – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"402011 marks the 40th anniversary of the computer virus<\/a>. Help Net Security<\/em><\/a> notes that over the last four decades, malware instances have grown from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Fortinet<\/a> (FTNT<\/a>) marks this dubious milestone with an article that counts down some of the malware evolution low-lights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sunnyvale, CA<\/a> network security firm says that viruses evolved from academic proof of concepts to geek pranks which have evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, monetization of the virus scene was underway and almost all viruses developed for the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. According to FortiGuard Labs<\/a>, the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years are:<\/p>\n

– See Part 1 Here<\/a> – See Part 2 Here\u00a0 – See Part 3 Here<\/a>\u00a0 – See Part 4 Here<\/a><\/p>\n

1945 – A Bug is Born<\/strong> –\u00a0 Grace Murray Hopper<\/a>, a researcher at Harvard, notes a system failure and finds a moth trapped in relay panels.<\/p>\n

1949 – Self-replicating programs<\/a> – <\/strong>John von Newman a researcher from Hungary published the theoretical base for computers that store information in their “memory”.<\/p>\n

1962 – <\/strong>A group of Bell Telephone Labs<\/a> researchers invents a game that destroys software programs.<\/p>\n

1971 – The Creeper Virus<\/a><\/strong> appears on ARPANET<\/a>, the forerunner of the Internet. It replicates itself and displays a message: “I’m the Creeper: Catch Me if You Can.”<\/p>\n

1974 – The Wabbit<\/a><\/strong> – was a self-replicating program<\/a>, that made multiple copies of itself on a computer until it bogs down the system to such an extent that system performance is reduced to zero and the computer eventually crashes. This virus was named wabbit because of the speed at which it was able to replicate.<\/p>\n

\"Apple<\/a>1981 – Elk Cloner<\/a><\/strong> – the first widespread virus on the Apple<\/a> (AAPL<\/a>) II platform<\/a>, spreads by the floppy disk and infects boot sectors, generating messages and impairing performance.<\/p>\n

1983 –\u00a0 The term “computer virus”<\/strong> comes into vogue after Professor Len Adleman<\/a> at Lehigh University demonstrates the concept at a seminar.<\/p>\n

1986 – The Brain<\/a><\/strong> is the first global epidemic on the PC platform and shows businesses and consumers are clueless about protection.<\/p>\n

1987 – Jerusalem virus<\/a><\/strong> – On any Black Friday (Friday the 13th), it would delete any programs that were run, instead of infecting them, so it simply couldn’t be ignored,” Roger Thompson told<\/a> News.com, Australia<\/a>. “You couldn’t throw away your hard drive, and reformatting it didn’t remove the virus,<\/em>” the chief research officer for AVG<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

\"BSD<\/a>1988 – The Morris worm<\/a> <\/strong>– created by Robert Tappan Morris<\/a>, infects DEC<\/a> VAX<\/a> and Sun<\/a> machines running BSD UNIX<\/a> connected to the Internet<\/a>\u00a0and becomes the first worm to spread extensively “in the wild”, and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun<\/a> vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

1990 – Chameleon<\/a><\/strong>– the first documented polymorphic virus<\/a>, malware that adapts and changes to avoid detection.<\/p>\n

1992 – Michelangelo<\/a> <\/strong>– was expected to create a digital apocalypse on March 6, with millions of computers having their information wiped according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus.\u00a0 Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1995 –\u00a0 Concept<\/a><\/strong> – the first Macro virus<\/a> attacked Microsoft<\/a> (MSFT<\/a>) Word<\/a> documents.<\/p>\n

1996 – Laroux<\/a><\/strong> – the first Microsoft<\/a> (MSFT<\/a>) Excel<\/a> virus, appears in the wild.<\/p>\n

\"\"1999 – The Happy99<\/a> worm<\/strong> – invisibly attached itself to emails and would display fireworks to hide the changes being made then wished the user a happy New Year. It modified system files related to Microsoft<\/a> (MSFT<\/a>) Outlook Express<\/a> and Internet Explorer<\/a> (IE) on Windows 95<\/a> and Windows 98<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1999 – The Melissa worm<\/a><\/strong> targeted\u00a0Microsoft<\/a> (MSFT<\/a>) Word<\/a> and Outlook-based\u00a0systems, and created considerable<\/a> network traffic.<\/p>\n

rb-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in the day, I had to deal with both Happy99 and Melissa, as well as the occasional Stoned. Melissa was the easiest to deal with since I was running a GroupWise shop at the time, once the news spread, we just pulled the Cat5 from the GWIA and we saw minimal blowback. Let’s hear it for technological diversity.<\/em><\/p>\n

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