computer virus
computer virus
Licensed from Columbia University Press
Antivirus programs and hardware have been developed to combat viruses. These search for evidence of a virus program (by checking for appearances or behavior that are characteristic of computer viruses), isolate infected files, and remove viruses from a computer's software. Researchers are working to sidestep the tedious process of manually analyzing viruses and creating protections against each by developing an automated immune system for computers patterned after biological processes. In 1995 Israel became the first country to legislate penalties both for those who write virus programs and those who spread the programs.
A distinction should be made between a virus—which must attach itself of another program to be transmitted—and a bomb, a worm, and a Trojan horse. A bomb is a program that resides silently in a computer's memory until it is triggered by a specific condition, such as a date. A worm is a destructive program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing as it goes. A Trojan horse is a malicious program that passes itself off as a benign application; it cannot reproduce itself and, like a virus, must be distributed by diskette or electronic mail.
See F. B. Cohen, A Short Course on Computer Viruses (2d ed. 1994); G. Smith, The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground (1994); W. T. Polk et al., Anti-Virus Tools and Techniques for Computer Systems (1995); M. A. Ludwig. The Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses (2d ed. 1998); P. E. Fites, P. Johnston, and M. P. J. Kratz, The Computer Virus Crisis (1999).
Licensed from Columbia University Press
Computer program designed to copy itself into other programs, with the intention of causing mischief or damage. A virus will usually execute when it is loaded into a computer's memory. On execution, it instructs its host program to copy the viral code into any number of other programs and files stored in the computer. The corrupted programs may continue to perform their intended functions while also executing the virus's instructions, thus further propagating it. The infection may transfer itself to other computers through storage devices, computer networks, and on-line systems. A harmless virus may simply cause a cryptic message to appear when the computer is turned on; a more damaging virus can destroy valuable data. Antivirus software may be used to detect and remove viruses from a computer, but the software must be updated frequently for protection against new viruses.
Learn more about computer virus with a free trial on Britannica.com.
©Brain (the industry standard name being Brain) is (in its first incarnation written in January 1986) considered to be the first computer virus for MS-DOS. It infects the boot sector of storage media formatted with the DOS File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. The virus is also known as Lahore, Pakistani, Pakistani Brain, Brain-A and UIUC. Businessweek magazine at the time called the virus the Pakistani flu.
Description
©Brain affects the computer by replacing the boot sector of a floppy disk with a copy of the virus. The real boot sector is moved to another sector and marked as bad. Infected disks usually have three kibibytes of bad sectors. The disk label is changed to ©Brain, and the following text can be seen in infected boot sectors:- Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!!
©Brain lacks code for dealing with hard disk partitioning, and avoids infecting hard disks by checking the most significant bit of the BIOS drive number being accessed; ©Brain does not infect the disk if the bit is clear, unlike other viruses at the time which were totally agnostic of disk partitioning and consequentially destroyed data stored on hard disks by treating them in the same way as floppy disks. ©Brain often went undetected partially due to this deliberate non-destructiveness, especially when the user paid little to no attention to the slow speed of floppy disk access.
The virus came complete with the brothers' address and three phone numbers, and a message that told the user that their machine was infected and for inoculation the user should call them:
- Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit * Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination...
Author Response
When the brothers began to receive a large number of phone calls from people in United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere, demanding them to disinfect their machines, the brothers were stunned and tried to explain to the outraged callers that their motivation had not been malicious. They ended up having to get their phone lines cut off and regretted that they had revealed their contact info in the first place. The brothers are still in business in Pakistan as Internet service providers with a company called Brain Limited.It is speculated that the brothers created the virus as a "cute gimmick" to advertise their business.
Variants
Ashar is an older version of Brain. There are six variants where the message is different.See also
References
External links
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Tuesday October 07, 2008 at 07:52:21 PDT (GMT -0700)
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