The concept of computer virus actually originated quite early. A few years before the first commercial computer appeared, Feng, the pioneer of computer? John von neumann outlined the blueprint of virus program in his paper Theory and Organization of Complex Automata. But at that time, most computer experts could not imagine such a self-replicating program.
1975, American popular science writer John? Brewer wrote a book called Shockwave Knight, which described the story of computer as a tool for the struggle between good and evil in the information society for the first time and became one of the best-selling books of that year.
1977 summer, Thomas? Jay? Thomas. J.Ryan's science fiction "Puberty of P- 1" became an American bestseller. In this book, the author describes a virus that can infect each other in computers. The virus finally took control of 7000 computers, causing a disaster. A few years later, things in the virtual science fiction world finally began to become a nightmare for computer users.
And almost at the same time, the famous American AT & amp； In T Bell Lab, three young people play a boring game after work: write programs that can eat other people's programs to fight each other. This game named "Core War" further embodies the concept of "infectivity" of computer viruses.
1983165438+1October 3, Fred, a student at the University of Southern California, USA? Under the UNIX system, Fred Cohen wrote a program that would cause the system to crash, but this program did not attract the attention and recognition of some professors. Cohen published these programs in the paper to prove his theory, which caused quite a shock at that time. Cohen's program formed the destructive concept of computer virus.
However, this infectious and destructive program is really called "virus", and it appeared in a monthly magazine of Scientific American two years later. A columnist named A.K.Dewdney began to call this program a virus when discussing the "core war" and Apple II computers (there is no doubt that Apple II computers were popular at that time, and at that time, our familiar PC simply disappeared). From then on, we finally gave this infectious or destructive program a name "virus".
The first real computer virus
By 1987, the first computer virus, C-brain, was finally born (this seems to be nothing to celebrate). Generally speaking, the industry recognizes that this is the real ancestor of computer viruses with complete characteristics. This virus program was written by a pair of Pakistani brothers Basit and Amjad. They run a local shop selling personal computers. Because local software piracy is prevalent, their main purpose is to prevent their own software from being pirated at will. As long as someone steals their software, C-BRAIN will attack and eat the remaining space on the pirate's hard disk.
This virus didn't have much lethality at that time, but later some people made some abnormal viruses based on C brain. Other new virus creations have also appeared, not only individuals, but also many creative groups (such as NuKE, Phalcon/Skism, VDV). Various anti-virus, anti-virus, anti-virus software and professional companies have also appeared. For a time, all kinds of virus manufacturing and anti-virus programs are constantly innovating, just like a hundred schools of thought contend.
Famous virus in DOS era
The so-called "virus of DOS era" means that it is an antique of DOS era. Readers should not think that if you enter the Windows 95/98 era, you will not be infected with the virus in the DOS era. In fact, because Windows 95/98 is a DOS-based operating system at best, even under Windows 95/98, you will get angry if you are not careful!
Jerusalem (Jerusalem)
This antique virus actually has a more widely known nickname, called "Black Friday". Why is there such an interesting nickname? The reason is simple: because as long as it is Friday 13, the virus will break out. When an attack occurs, all programs executed by users will be terminated, and the symptoms are quite intense.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo's name is really famous to some early computer users. The famous reason is that it has the name of a generation of artist Michelangelo, and more importantly, its lethality is amazing: when Michelangelo's birthday comes on March 6 every year (which is why it is called "Michelangelo"), the virus will celebrate the master's birthday with a formatted hard disk. As a result, all the materials you have worked so hard to build are destroyed and will never turn over.
Monkey (monkey)
Monkeys are said to be the first "guided" virus. As long as you use the system floppy disk infected by Monkey to start, the virus will invade your computer, and then wait for an opportunity to clear the partition table of the hard disk, so that the message "invalid drive specification" will appear as soon as you start. Compared with the way that "file-type" viruses can only be poisoned by executing infected files, Monkey is indeed more difficult.
Music bug (music bug)
This kind of attack will scream loudly, and even cause data loss and can't be turned on, which is the local virus in Taiwan Province Province. So, when you hear a burst of music coming from the computer automatically, don't think that your computer is smarter than others, and it is probably poisoned.
In fact, there are many viruses that can sing, and there is also a famous virus (whose name is forgotten) that sings "Two Tigers" when attacking!
There are many kinds of viruses in DOS period, and people constantly rewrite the existing viruses. Later, some people even wrote the so-called "two-body engine", which can create a more diverse look of the virus and make people hard to prevent! The symptoms of virus attack are varied, some can sing, some can delete files, some can format hard disks, and some can display various graphics and sound effects on the screen. Fortunately, however, these antique viruses in the DOS period are not as deadly as before, because most antivirus software can be easily deleted.
The arrival of the window era
With the popularity of Windows 3. 1 in the world, the operating environment of personal computers has officially entered the Windows era. Then, the popularity of Windows 95/98 makes almost all personal computers run under Windows. In the Windows environment, the most famous ones are probably "macro virus" and "32-bit virus".
macro virus
With the development of various software packages under Windows, many softwares begin to provide the so-called "macro" function, which allows users to record some tedious processes into a simple instruction by "creating macros" to facilitate their own operation. However, this convenient function, through the intentional design, finally makes the "file-type" virus enter a new milestone: the traditional file-type virus will only infect the execution files with the suffix of exe and com, while the macro virus will infect the data files stored in the software such as Word, Excel, AmiPro and Access. More exaggeratedly, this macro virus is cross-platform. Take Word macro virus as an example. It can infect Word files and general templates on DOS, Windows 3. 1/95/98/NT, OS/2, Macintosh and other systems.
Among these macro viruses, except Melissa to be discussed later, the most famous one is Taiwan Province 1B, which makes people pale. The outbreak of this virus is: every month on 13, as long as you open a Word file casually, a dialogue window will appear on the screen and ask you a complicated arithmetic problem. If the answer is wrong (this complicated calculation can only be worked out quickly by superman), twenty windows will be opened continuously, and then another question will appear, and so on, until the system resources are exhausted and it crashes.
Although the macro virus is highly contagious, its destructive power is not too strong, and the detoxification method is relatively easy, and even it can be detoxified manually without antivirus software.
32-bit virus
The so-called "32-bit virus" is a new file virus produced after Windows 95. Although it can also infect exe executable files, this virus focuses on Windows 32-bit programs, the most famous of which is the CIH virus, which was very popular last year.
The greatness of CIH virus is that it can disassemble its own ontology and stuff it into infected files, so the size of infected files will not change, and anti-virus software is not easy to detect. The last version of the CIH virus, except the 26th of each month, will destroy the format of your hard disk, and sometimes destroy the data in the motherboard BIOS, so that you can't boot at all! Although most anti-virus software has the latest virus code to solve this intractable virus, because it is too powerful, everyone should be careful. (CIH may attack again on April 26th this year. Are you okay? )
The revolution of internet
Some people say that the emergence of the Internet has set off a new round of information revolution. Because on the Internet, the distance between people is shortened to a very small distance. With the establishment of various websites and the use of search engines, everyone can easily get the information they want from the Internet.
The prevalence of the Internet has created a lot of information circulation, but it provides an excellent channel for computer hackers who are keen on spreading viruses and stealing other people's accounts and passwords. Therefore, although we ordinary users enjoy the convenience brought by the Internet, we are also caught in another kind of fear.
A new shortcut for virus transmission
Due to the convenience of the Internet, the spread of the virus is more diversified. Traditional viruses may spread through disks or other storage media, but now, you can infect your friends through emails or files in ICQ. Even if you download files from the network, you may receive files containing viruses.
However, although the network makes the virus easier to spread, in fact, this virus still belongs to the traditional type. As long as you don't download files from some unknown websites casually (because most of the downloaded files provided by well-known websites are treated with antivirus), install antivirus software, update the virus code at any time, and don't rush to execute the downloaded files, but check the virus first (because the programs infected by traditional viruses will not be infected and attacked as long as they are not executed).
The rise of the second generation virus
All kinds of viruses mentioned above are basically traditional viruses, the so-called "first generation viruses". There will be such a name, which is mainly used to distinguish the latest brand-new virus after the vigorous development of the Internet. This new virus is very different from the traditional virus in essence, so some people call it the "second generation virus".
The biggest difference between the second generation virus and the first generation virus is that the transmission route of the second generation virus is based on the browser. This development is really jaw-dropping!
It turns out that in order to make it easier for web designers to create more exciting animations on web pages and make web pages more spatial, several large companies have jointly developed the technologies of Active X and Java. Through these technologies, you can even distinguish the version of the software you use and suggest which software you should download to update the version, which is a very convenient tool for most ordinary users. However, if you want the animation of these web pages to execute normally, the browser will automatically download the programs of these Active X and Java applets to the hard disk. In this process, developers of malicious programs also use the same channels to penetrate into personal computers through the network. This is the recently emerging "second generation virus", the so-called "network virus".
Soldiers against generals, soil against water-take appropriate measures as appropriate.
At present, the common second-generation viruses are actually not destructive, such as "window bombs" that keep opening windows in browsers and "noisy bears" with electronic timers. As long as you close the browser, there will be no impact on the computer. However, with the rapid development of science and technology, it is difficult to guarantee that newer and more destructive viruses will not appear.
However, we don't need to be too pessimistic because of this trend, let alone refuse to use the computer to surf the Internet because of choking on food. Throughout the history of computer development, the confrontation between virus and antivirus software has been continuous. As long as you are careful, you can still swim happily in the world of the Internet.