Internet Security - History

In 1987, the 'Vienna' virus emerged. Ralph Burger got a copy of it, disassembled it, and published the result in his book 'Computer Viruses: a High-tech Disease'. This particular book made the idea of writing viruses popular, explained how to do it, and resulted in creating up hundreds and in thousands of computer viruses implementing concepts from it. On November 2, 1988, Peter Yee at the NASA Ames Research Centre sent a note out to the TCP/IP Internet mailing list that said, 'We are currently under attack from an internet VIRUS! It has hit Berkeley, UC San Diego, Lawrence Livermore, Stanford, and NASA Ames.' Of course, this report was the first evidence of what was to be later known as The Morris Worm. Roberts, a 23-year-old Cornell University student, wrote some software code as part of a research project aimed at determining the size of the internet. The worm was meant to infect computers, in order to see how many connections to the internet existed. Because of a flaw in the software code, however, it ended up exploiting vulnerabilities in Unix and spread rapidly, infecting multiple machines multiple times and rendering them unusable.

In 1989, there was the WANK/OILZ worm, an automated attack on VMS systems attached to the internet. It exploited vulnerabilities in widely distributed programs such as the sendmail program, an intricate program commonly found on UNIX-based systems for sending and receiving electronic mail. In 1994, intruder tools were created to "sniff" packets from the network easily, resulting in the widespread compromising of user names and password information. In 1995, the method that internet computers use to name and authenticate each other was exploited by a new set of viruses that allowed widespread internet attacks on computers that have trust relationships with any other computers.

In 1994, Russian hacker Vladimir Levin broke into Citibank's cash management system and embezzled $10 million into his own accounts. The stolen accounts were unencrypted and all but $400,000 of the stolen cash was recovered and Levin was arrested. He pled guilty to conspiracy to commit computer, wire and bank fraud. On April 11 1994, a full-scale epidemic broke out, caused by file and boot polymorphic virus called 'Tequila'. In September 1994, the same thing happened with the 'Amoeba' virus. In 1996, the 'Boza' virus emerged, which was the first virus designed specifically for Windows 95 files. In 1998, the first Java virus 'Strange Brew' affected computers.

In 2005, the Bropia Worm affected the internet. It targeted MSN messenger for spreading. The 2007 Storm Worm was a Trojan horse. It included an executable file as an attachment. When the e-mail recipient opened the attachment, he or she unknowingly became part of a botnet (a collection of infected computers) to spread viruses and Spam. Once infected, a computer is called as a bot. It is an instance of adaptive malware. It has been used in different kinds of criminal activities. The authors and the controllers, of the Storm Worm, have not yet been identified.

Remember that your computer is also vulnerable to attacks through the internet. Use of licensed antivirus software and proper firewalls can prevent or tackle this problem. Ideally speaking, your computer should be disconnected from the internet. But this will greatly diminish the usefulness of your machine.