Report on the Psychology of Computer Viruses:
Prevention is the Best Medicine
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Online Resources I Discovered
Dr.
Solomon's - Virus Central
Dr. Solomon's virus central is a comprehensive site
which provides much information on discovering if a virus is on your computer
and then steps to fix the problem. Along with this the site provides
a lot information on different types of viruses and also has a encyclopedia
of viruses discovered by the web author.
Bill
Wall's Computer Viruses Links
This site is exactly what the title states, a table
of links to various sites that deal with the topic of computer viruses.
These links encompass both software to prevent and repair and to sites
that have information about viruses. |
Computer Viruses
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Akira Sasabe (G7) had a virus problem towards
the end of the semester. He wrote in an email
message:
Date: Tue., 2 Dec 1997 17:59:32 -1000
From: Akira Sasabe
To: Leon James
Subject: My Report 2
Dr. James,
I decided to retype the whole thing today and I did just about the
half of it now, and the information
seems to appear all right on my web page. It was really unfortunate
since this time I decided to use
computers only at Porteus and Moore Hall. I still do not know what
was the cause of the virus
problem, but I think as long as I stick with one computer, it seems
to be OK. I found my "favorite"
computer at Porteus and do my best to secure the seat whenever I come
in to do the work.
I just hope that I find out the cause of this problem so other people
who do not have computers at
home will not suffer like me...
My Reactions
and Experiences
I
personally have never experienced the problem of my computer being infected
by a virus. But I feel that from the experience that Mr. Sasabe is
describing, computer viruses are very similar to biological viruses.
I feel this because of the way the virus encounter seemed to have debilitated
Mr. Sasabe. He quarantined himself to one computer in the lab and
seems to be living in fear of a possible "relapse". In this way the
computer virus can be just as deadly to the human biological being as a
biological virus. I myself do have a virus scanner at home on my
Power Macintosh yet I still feel unsecure for it seems very limited to
its capabilities. As far as knowing of others who have suffered a
computer virus I know of only one. He was my art teacher in high
school and when visiting one day I found out his computer had a virus and
he was in the process of fixing the problem. After seeing how long
and expensive the problem was I can understand the fear people have towards
computer viruses.
Edupage Online, December 1997
DOE ISSUES WARNING ON CRACKER TOOLS The U.S. Department of Energy
has issued a bulletin warning that two new
computer attack tools, known as Teardrop and
Land, are being used maliciously by crackers
intent on breaking into computer systems
and networks. The software sniffs out vulnerable
servers and launches attacks based on
the "denial-of-service" strategy that overwhelms
servers with bogus messages, blocking
out legitimate traffic. "They hit the button
and go down to the cinema with their
girlfriends," says a senior systems consultant
with the Defense Information Systems
Agency. "They come back and see that they
have looked at 200,000 systems."
(TechWeb 24 Dec 97)
My Reaction
It seems to me
that there is a very sick and twisted motive to do something as described
here. I do not understand the purpose of creating a backlog for other
people who may need the information provided by those servers. It
appears that people have lost respect for others. To set up this
type of act and then leave seems to serve no purpose. I guess I do
not fully understand the motives and as such can not react outside of emotion.
My reaction at this time would be very irrational and of very little use
to the discussion of such a odd behavior.
What is
a computer virus?
As I was reading the definition
of a virus on Symantec's homepage.
According to Symantec, a virus is, "A piece of software designed and
written to adversely affect your computer by altering the way it works
without your knowledge or permission." There are two things that need to
be addressed when discussing viruses. First, viruses are designed
to infect only software. They cannot affect you monitors, printers or other
hardware. Although viruses can make it appear as though it has infected
your hardware because it affects the software that controls these pieces
of equipment. That's the good news. The bad news is that it infects
your software and can get pretty creative and destructive in infecting
everything in your hard drive such as applications files and their related
documents. Viruses can also affect the boot sector (the start-up
portion of all hard disks and floppies). That means that once a file is
infected, it can affect the application which in turn can infect all files
created in that application. This in turn could find its way to your
disk(s), ready to infect any computer that you use your disk(s) in.
In a way computer viruses are like biological blood transmitted diseases,
if you do not clean the needle (disk) you run the risk of infecting others.
And much like their biological counterparts computer viruses can spread
quickly, and can inflict much damage on your computer.
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How do they
work?
To examine how viruses work
they must first be separated into two basic types: benign and malignant.
Benign viruses inflict no damage to your applications but put annoying
messages on your computer screen. The other type is the malignant virus
which are created to inflict damage. The malignant virus is the type
of virus that most people think of when they hear the term computer virus.
All viruses, whether benign or malignant serve basically two functions:
The first function is to spread itself from one file to another without
the victim's knowledge. This is called self replication or propagation
which is described at the Symantec web site. The second is to implement
the symptom or damage planned by its creator. Included in this would be
erasing a disk, corrupting programs, or causing your computer to go haywire.
This phenomenon is coined the virus payload according to the people at
Symantec. Viruses work by placing an infected code into a file code or
an application code which will then "infect" any other files or applications
that it comes in contact with.
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How do they
spread?
They spread or propagate by
means of code transmitted through disks and machines. A simple simple analogy
would be to compare it to the influenza virus. A machine that
has the virus in one of its applications implants the code into the file
of any users of that application. Then when the user saves the file
to his/her disk the virus becomes transmittable. That disk is used
at the computer lab where people share the computers. Now that machine
is infected and everyone who uses that computer will have infected disks
and those disks infect other computers and so on. This is much like
shaking the hand of someone who is sick and then going out and shaking
others hands. Viruses may also infect computers through the internet, and
that can be extremely dangerous when viruses spread effectively in that
medium. So much like a deadly antigen like Ebola computer viruses
now have a way of crossing international waters and infecting computers
all over the world.
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What types
are out there?
Many different types each with
its own deadly code. Using the two basic types (benign and malignant),
different viruses attack in different ways. But all viruses attack
a part software and each has a different code which produces different
results. There are ones that infect files as well as ones that infect applications.
There are macro viruses that infect within applications and are activated
when the victim uses a predetermined function(s) which are coded into the
virus, like "save as." One thing that all of these viruses have in common
is the ability to spread and to infect users if they are not cautious.
In addition it must be addressed that these are the ways viruses commonly
work now, but as technology expands and as users become more adept to computers
viruses will inevitably change as well.
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What are
some infamous viruses in the history of computer viruses?
The Trojan Horse
In literal terms the Trojan Horse
is not a virus, but a virus type. I think that this was worth noting because
this type of virus has malicious intent written all over it. According
to Symantec, The Trojan
Horse disguises itself as a legitimate program and when it is executed,
it covertly causes damage to your computer. Unlike other viruses, Trojan
Horses do not replicate, and are most frequently distributed through online
services or public domain bulletin boards. In plain language, this means
that this virus type can enter as something we want on our computer such
as a shareware program or even as a Netscape upgrade and when the horse
is opened through opening the new program, we think we have something neat,
but in reality, our computer is dying inside. This is scary to me because
it can spread through the internet which means faster, stealthier movement
of this type of virus.
ANTI
The ANTI virus has two different
strains: ANTI A and ANTI B. Strain A was discovered in February of 1989
and strain B was discovered a year later, in September of 1990. They were
both discovered in France. It seems that ANTI does not infect files, but
applications and files that resemble applications. This means that our
files are not normally touched, but the application that created them is
affected. To clarify applications are program files that are used to create
a file or cause a action, like MS Word, ClarisWorks, and anything that
can be opened to use, possibly even games. With the ANTI virus strains
VirusScan and other virus detectors cannot repair the applications perfectly,
which means the user might need to replace the drive(s) that the virus
corrupted. Additionally, ANTI can infect applications that are never run,
so you users may be infected and not truly know until they open (run) the
application.
The Alliance
The Alliance is a US born virus
and made its debut in the summer of 1996. It infects documents in the Microsoft
Word program. Once a system is infected, the macro virus replicates with
documents and templates. The Alliance Virus is date sensitive and replicates
itself only on the 2nd, 11th, and 12th of the month. If this virus is activated,
it displays the message, "You have been infected with the Alliance (Source:
Network Associates)."
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Myths about
computer viruses
A
common myth that I found from individuals that have little or no background
in computers is that computer viruses actually cause the computer to melt
down, physically. It seems that people believe that all viruses work
by causing the computer to run at a speed greater than it is designed for
and thus causing the computer to self destruct. These and other myths
are propagated very quickly because of peoples lack of information.
Since computers are such new machines and we seem to be discovering new
uses every day people will believe just about anything.
Another common myth is that as long as a user has
a virus checker they are free and safe from viruses. This statement
is one that needs to be dealt with. All though virus checkers have
a very large database even the best checkers will not be able to recognize
every new strain. So in the fight against viruses I think that viruses
have the upper hand for now.
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Significance
of computer viruses existence
I
think the significance of the viral existence is to allow people to proceed
into the world of computers with some caution. Bt having viruses
out in the world it teaches people how to use their computers. I
f a person is unfamiliar with computers they will probably not come into
contact with computer viruses. One major plus I can see for computer
viruses is privacy. A big issue is that there is alway the possibility
of someone invadind your files and stealing information, or destroying.
But with viruses computer software egineneers are pressed to make computing
safe and acsessharder from the outside. So the creation of viruses
has also created a move to make better software which is compatible with
other programs.
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Major Computer
Scare
People react to computer viruses in much rthe same
way as humans react to the news of human viral epidemic, frenzy.
With the Michealangelo virus described below many people were heard as
calling it a doomsday virus. It seems that people react very quickly
to even the thought of a computer virus. In this day and age that
makes perfect sense. Today's world is run on computers, from televisions
and cars, to heart monitors and even surgical instruments. The consequences
of a very nasty and far reaching virus are scary. With the Y2K bug
(year 2000) causing so much of an uproar because of the possibilities of
computers shutting down imagine for a minute the chaos a large virus could
have. In this day and age I think it is good that people are somewhat
paranoid of computer viruses.
One of the biggest computer virus scars in
the history of computer viruses was the Michaelangelo
virus. This virus was first recognized by the computer world in the
summer of 1991. On March 6, the trigger date which is also Michaelangelo's
birthday, this virus activates. This particular virus destroys data by
overwriting the medium from which the computer was booted. The Michealangelo
virus was an obscure threat until January 1992 when 500 personal computers
contaminated with the virus were shipped from a major computer manufacturer
in the United States. Within one week, another major manufacturer admitted
to the accidental distribution of 900 floppy disks which were infected
with the Michaelangelo virus. In the frenzy the media reported that "one
out of four PCs in the U.S. would fall prey" to the virus. Although no
exact figures are known as far as how many computer were infected, the
worldwide estimates ranged from ten thousand to twenty thousand computers.
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For Future
Generations
The
hope of this report is that future generations might be able to use it
as a starting point for their own reports. In the world of the psychology
of computer viruses one must remeber to evaluate all claims before jumping
the gun and passing on information about a virus( hoaxing). Also
it is imperative that anyone who is transfering data to their computers
from either the internet or from other media should invest in more than
one good virus checker.
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Epilogue
In
conclusion I felt that this report has taught me a lot about viruses as
I was researching the topic. Although I have some computer background,
in the past I have always been told to protect my software by practicing
good habits such as scanning for viruses, and be cautious of strange e-mails,
but I never really was told why. It was just assumed that viruses
were bad and that was that. I actually feel that I am know more prepared
for the encounter of a virus (hope to never encounter one) and I am even
more cautious of the way I transport media. I recomend to all to
purchase as many good virus checkers as possible. Even though one
mught be effective one can not be too cautious when it comes to the world
of computer viruses.
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