Report on the Psychology of Computer Viruses
A New Form of Life
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The following is an account of a student who encountered a problem with a virus:
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...
This student's experience is one that is shared by many computer users today. Being attacked by a virus is a problem that you usually don't think about until it is too late. Hopefully, after only one attack, we can learn to take preventative measures. What are viruses? What can we do to prevent attacks by viruses? What do they do to our computers and our data? These are the questions that I will answer.
I have been lucky so far in that I have never lost any data or had any other problems caused by viruses that I know of. Having accidently erased important documents, I understand what it feels like to have these sort of problems. In November of 1997 I did have an infected disc that caused other people some problems. Having no computer of my own, I use the University computers at Sinclair, Porteus, and Moore. I also used two computers at my office at the Manoa Innovation Center. In addition to this, I used computers at the Internet Cafe on Kapahulu, and my roomates computer. Somewhere, sometime I picked up a virus that spread to my roomate's and coworker's computers. I am not sure what kind of damage the virus caused, but I'm sure that it was an inconvienance to correct the problem. Lately I have been using the computers on the third and fourth floors of Porteus, all of which have a virus detection device.
The following is a news item from 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)
Individuals, such as computer hackers and virus programmers are people who engage in a great deal of difficult, technical goal directed behavior. Cracking into a computer system or writing and spreading a virus are incredibly complicated tasks even with tools depicted in the above news item. By calling this difficult, I mean that a very small, probably less than one percent of computer users, know how to crack into systems. What then drives people to engage in such unlawful activities? Professional spying, like the type we see in popular films such as "Mission Impossible," is not responsable for security breeches. Instead of international espionage, the people involved in this type of activity are merely kids.
Kids are able to learn entirely new concepts at such a great speed that they make adults look stupid at times. Kids love to try and figure things out and explore, the perfect tools for a cracker. Give a kid a powerful computer and a modem and pretty soon he/she will be teaching you things you never knew. Given these characteristics, add in a little teenage rebellion. Teenagers find out that the world is not fair and that they must find a way to fit in. In a world where many computer "geeks" feel like they do not fit in socially, the chance to get even at a world that you are angry at, the chance to do something to prove that you are just as important as everyone else comes from computer cracking/hacking.
Another motivation for engaging in cracking is that it can make you feel like an important person. Many people become lost in today's competative society. Getting into 200,000 systems as described in the news item can give the individual's ego a big boost. It does not matter that you are breaking any laws, being able to affect so many people can make you feel like more than you really are. Again, this is closely associated with the temporary narcissistic personalitys that American teenagers inevitably go through.
There are several sources of valuable computer virus information currently avaliable on the web. Some of these are:
What are computer viruses and what is their significance?
A virus is a piece of software designed and written to adversely affect your computer without your consent or knowlege. Technically, viruses are "a segment of program code that implants itself into one of your executable files and spreads systematically from one file to another. Computer viruses are all created by people. Two characteristics of all viruses are that they are self replicating (spreads from one file to another without your knowlege) and they do something to your computer that you do not want or need, such as corrupting your programs, write incorrect information on your documents, alter directory information, or erase data. Sometimes the damage is not malignant, but benign. These viruses simply conceal themselves until a certain date or time and then display a message. Sometimes viruses areise accidently from poor programming. Most viruses are not of the malinant type, the worst of which can erase your entire hard drive or crash your system. Computer viruses are just like the biological ones in that they can not survive or even replicate without a host. They are different in that they can not evolve, and because they are man made. The nexception to this is the polymorphic type of virus, which can change its shape to elude detection. Computer virus code is stored in binary form (0,1), as opposed to DNA code (A, G, C, T).
How do they work?
Viruses work by attaching themselves to another program, such as your word processing program, or to the boot sector of a discette. When the infected file is executed or when the infected discette is used, the virus is activated. The computer user may put in another disc while the virus is activated and this disc in turn becomes infected. In the case of the boot sector type of virus, the virus travels from your discette to the hard drive when an infected discette is left in the drive and the machine is rebooted. Compters have clocks that are always running. Many viruses hide themselves in the comuters memory, waiting for a certain date and time to appear. The whole time, spreading around to unsuspecting computer users. Once a virus is on your hard drive, it can infect any application that you start up. Viruses can either go away once you turn of your computer or they can stay on the hard drive. As with the virus that causes AIDS, HIV, computer viruses proliferate only if the user of the infected files/conputer does not know he/she has a virus, and continues to go on with buisness as usual, infecting everyime he/she comes across. The problems presented by computer viruses can be prevented usually through the use of virus scanning software. This software has been compared to the human immune system's T-cells. Despite this type of anti-virus technology, viruses, something rarely heard of only ten years ago, have grown exponentially. Back in 1986, there were only four known viruses. Today, on acerage there are three viruses created every day.
What are some famous computer viruses and how do people react to them?
Datacrime and Friday the 13th, viruses that appeared in 1987, became major media events. Largely due to the novelty of the situation. The most famous computer virus programmer is the Dark Avenger, who developed 76 viruses in 1990. The most famous virus of all time is the Michealangelo virus, a boot sector virus. The reason for the sucess of this virus and other boot sector viruses are that they are so hard to detect. The trigger date of this virus is March 6, Michealangelo's birthday. On this date, any computer infected with the virus will erase data. This virus was a big scare because people at the time did not know much about viruses. Some people took on a doomsday attitude about viruses. The Michealangelo virus is now considered to be eradicated.
What are virus myths?
Sometimes people will recieve an e-mail message claiming that if they recieve a cartain e-mail message that they should not view it because it will cause their computer to be adversly afected. They are also instructed to tell all of their friends about tis by forwarding the e-mailing everyone they know. This of course is a hoax, there is no way that people can become infected with a virus by simply reading their e-mail. This type of hoax follows the same lines as chain letters. Why would people start up a scare like this? Again, it is for the thrill of doing something that will in some way touch thousands, perhaps millions of other people. One can achieve a certain greatness through this. The same reason that someone would want to have his picture on the front page of a newspaper is the reason why people would want to write a virus hoax. The challenge involved in propogating a virus hoax is too exiting to resist for some.
My report compared to those of other students
There were several good reports written on computer viruses. My report explored the mind of the computer virus programmer and offered theories as to what motivates him.
Conclusions
The term computer virus, is an appropriate one in that computer viruses behave in the same way that biological ones do. This mataphor has limitations though, the most important is that computer viruses have no true physical presence. Matter can not be created or destroyed, computer viruses can. Computer programs can not exist without a physical host, that being disc space. Human thought can not exist without a physical host, this being neural networks.
The problems caused by computer viruses are costly and will continue to be a problem in the forseeable future.