FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTER VIRUS TECHNOLOGY

COMPUTER VIRUS TECHNOLOGY

2.0 Introduction
The wind of change came on 26th March in the form of an email cyclone called Melissa.
Moreover, during 1999 numerous changes in the level of computer virus technology were
seen, Armstrong (May 2000, p1).
From an organisational point of view, societies around the world are just learning about
the level of importance that computer security against virus attacks and the critical
significance of cybercrime. Companies around the world lost vast amounts of time, money
and resources due to the lack of defense systems and lack of knowledge.
Companies must ensure that the all data processing equipment like computers, routers and
networks are robust and secure to withstand any type of malicious attack.
The following report details some of the more common malicious code specifically viruses,
explaining some of the damage, which these very powerful viruses can inflict on to any
computer that it is not well prepared for this kinds of attacks.
Armstrong (July 2000, p1), states that: 'February's big story for the information
security marketplace was the distributed denial-of-service attacks, which rendered the
likes of Yahoo!, eBay, and E*Trade helpless. Most recently, news of the LoveBug hit.
While statisticians still grapple with the costs associated with recuperating from this
newest bug's sting, the latest reports indicate that approximately 90 per cent of
networks worldwide were affected. Recovery costs associated with the LoveBug are
estimated to range from about $600 million upwards to a big $10 billion. Along with all
these woes, companies also have to fend off attacks - not only from the outside, but more
importantly from inside.
Malicious Code - A Virus
According to Pfleeger (1997, p179) A virus is a program that can pass on malicious code
to other nonmalicious programs by modifying them. The term virus arises because the
affected program acts like a biological virus: modification of good programs is like a
virus that infects other healthy subjects.
In Australia damaging data in a computer carries heavy penalties, according to Carroll
(1997, p33) in New South Wales, section 310 of the Crimes Act as amended in 1989 states
that a person intentionally and without authority or lawful excuse destroys, alters or
erases data, or inserts data, or interrupts or obstructs the lawful use of a computer is
liable to ten years of penal servitude or a fine of $100,000 or both .
According to Fites, Kratz & Brebner (1989) viruses or worms , program contructions which
can degrade an operating system, destroy data files, and do much damage to the
information a computer works with.
The main types Software Malicious Code
The Trojan Horse
According to Stamper (1998, P. 536-537), A Trojan horse program contains code intended to
disrupt the system. The trojan horse program are coded segments hidden inside a useful
program. Trojan horse programs have been created by disgruntled programmers. In one such
instance, a programmer inserted code that would periodically activate and erase
accounting and personnel records. A trojan horse program differs from viruses and worms
in that it does not attempt to replicate itself.
The ANSI bomb
An ANSI bomb is a sequence of characters, usually embedded in a text file, that
reprograms various keyboard functions of computers with ANSI console (screen and
keyboard) drivers. Such a possibility however, need not translate into much of a threat.
It is rare for modern software to require the computer it runs on to have an ANSI
console, so few PCs or other machines should load ANSI drivers.
The Worm
As stated by According to Pfleeger (1997, p179), The worm is a program that spreads
copies of itself through a network. The primary difference between a worm and a virus is
that a worm operates through networks and a virus can spread through any medium, but
usually copied program or data files.
Viruses
The Virus is the most popular of all kinds of malicious code. There are two main classes
of viruses. The first class consists of viruses that infect files that attach themselves
to ordinary program files. The second main type is the system or boot-record infectors.
File infectors usually attack executable programs, though some can infect any program for
which execution or interpretation is requested, such as sys, ovl, obj, and bat files.
File infectors can be either direct-action or resident.
A direct-action virus selects one or more programs to infect each time a program infected
by it is executed. A residentvirus installs itself somewhere in memory, the first time an
infected program is executed, infects other programs when they are executed.
Direct-action viruses are also sometimes referred to as non-resident.
The second main type of viruses, the system or boot-record infectors, which infect
executable code found in certain system areas on a disk. PCs boot-sector viruses, which
infect only the DOS boot sector, and the MBR viruses, which infect the Master Boot Record
(MBR) on fixed disks and the DOS boot sector on diskettes. Examples include Stoned,
Empire and Michelangelo. All common boot sector and MBR viruses are memory resident.
The File system or cluster viruses are those that modify directory table or FAT tables,
so that the virus is loaded and executed before the desired program is. The program
itself is not physically altered, only the directory entry of the program file is. Some
consider these to be a third category of viruses, while others consider them to be a
sub-category of the file infectors. KERNEL viruses target specific features of the
programs that contain the kernel of an operating system. A file infecting virus, that can
infect kernel program files is not a kernel virus, this term is reserved for describing
viruses that utilize somespecial feature of kernel files like their physical location on
disk or a special loading or calling convention.
The stealth virus
According to Stallings (1995, p.248) A Stealth virus uses compression so that the
infected program is exactly the same length as an uninfected version. A Stealth virus
while operational, hides the changes made to files or boot records. The very first DOS
virus was a stealth virus called Brain. Brian monitorsphysical disk I/O and re-directs
all reads to a Brain-infected boot sector to the disk area where the original boot sector
is stored.
The fast and slow infectors
A FAST infector is a virus that, when it is active in memory, infects not only programs
which are executed, but even those that are merely opened. The result is that if such a
virus is in memory, running ascanner or integrity checker can result in all (or at least
many) programs becoming infected. Examples are the Dark Avenger and the Frodo viruses.
The term SLOW infector is sometimes used to refer to a virus that only infect files as
they are modified or as they are created. The purpose is to fool people who use integrity
checkers into thinking that modifications reported by their integrity checker are due
solely to legitimate reasons. An example is the Darth Vader virus.
The sparse infector
The term sparse infector is sometimes used to describe a virus that infects only
occasionally (e.g. every tenth program executed), or only files whose lengths fall within
a narrow range, etc. By infecting less often, such viruses try to minimize the
probability of being discovered.
The companion virus
A companion virus is one that, instead of modifying an existing file, creates a new
program which (unknown to the user) is executed instead of the intended program. On exit,
the new program executes the original program so that things appear normal. On PCs this
has usually been accomplished by creating an infected .COM file with the same name as an
existing .EXE file. Integrity checking antivirus software that only looks for
modifications in existing files will fail to detect such viruses.
The tunnelling virus
A tunnelling virus is one that finds the original interrupt handlers in DOS and the BIOS
and calls them directly, thus bypassing any activity monitoring program which may be
loaded and have intercepted the respective interrupt vectors in its attempt to detect
viral activity.
The cavity virus
A cavity virus is one that overwrites a part of the host file that is filled with a
constant (usually nulls), without increasing the length of the file, but preserving its
functionality. The Lehigh virus was an early example of a cavity virus.
The dropper Virus
A dropper is a program that has been designed or modified to install a virus onto the
target system. The virus code is usually contained in a dropper in such a way, that it
won't be detected, by any virus scanner that would normally clean that virus.While quite
uncommon, a few droppers have been discovered. A dropper is effectively a Trojan Horse
whose payload is installing a virus infection. A dropper which installs a virus only in
memory (without infecting anything on the disk) is sometimes called an injector.
The armored virus
An armored virus is one that uses special tricks to make tracing, disassembling and
understanding of its code more difficult. A good example is the Whale virus.
The polymorphic viruses
According to Pfleeger (1997, p.188) " A virus that can change its appearance is called a
polymorphic virus (poly- means "many" and morph means "form")".
A technique for making a polymorphic virus is to choose among a variety of different
encryption schemes requiring different decryptionroutines: only one of these routines
would be plainly visible in any instance of the virus, an example of this kind was the
Whale virus.
Another more sophisticated form of polymorphism used so far is the Mutation Engine (MtE)
which comes in the form of an object module. With the Mutation
Engine any virus can be made polymorphic by adding certain calls to its assembler source
code and linking to the mutation-engine and random-number generator modules.
Conclusion
One could become pessimistic about the prospects and future trust and reliability of
computers and the internet but the correct methods of defense, Encryption, Software
Controls, Policies and Physical Controls we can improve the awareness and work towards a
solution.
From an organisational point of view, societies around the world are just learning about
the level of importance that computer security against virus attacks and the critical
significance of cybercrime. Companies around the world lost vast amounts of time, money
and resources due to the lack of defense systems and lack of knowledge.
Companies must ensure that the all data processing equipment like computers, routers and
networks are robust and secure to withstand any type of malicious attack.
I hope the reporthas detail some of the more common malicious code specifically viruses,
explaining some of the damage, which these very powerful viruses can inflict on to any
computer that it is not well prepared for this kinds of attacks.
Bibliography
References & Bibilography
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 1992, ACM Code of Ethics and Professional
Conduct, http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.htm. ACM council. 10/16/92. Online accessed
on 18th July 2000.
Armstrong, l., 2000, Beating the Bad Guys: Designing Secure Systems, [ONLINE]. Available
at URL:
http://www.check-mark.com/securecomputing/2000_07/special/special.html [Accessed 29 July
2000].
Armstrong, l., 2000, Virus War Marches On, [ONLINE]. Available at URL:
http://www.check-mark.com/securecomputing/2000_05/cover/cover.html [Accessed 29 July
2000].
Carrol, J.M. 1997,"Computer Security",3rd Edition, Buttleworth-Heinemann, MA, P33.
Fites, Kratz & Brebner, 1989, Control & Security of computer information systems,
Computer Science Inc. MD. P. 186.
Pfleeger, C.P., 1997, Security in Computing, Prentice -Hall Inc., NJ. P. 517.
Stallings, W., 1995, "Network & Internetwork Security principles and practice, Prentice
-Hall Inc., NJ. P. 248.
Stamper, D.A., 1999, "Business Data Communications", Addison Wesley Longman P. 536-537),