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Intro to Malware Attacks
Symptoms of Virus Attack
• Computer runs slower then usual
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Computer no longer boots up
Screen occasionally flickers
PC speaker beeps periodically
System crashes for no reason
Files/directories sometimes disappear
Denial of Service (DoS)
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U.S. Businesses lost $5 billion to $6 billion due
to computer viruses
The following computers have been hacked:
The Naval Ocean Systems Command
NASA
A British Nuclear Power Plant
IBM
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals
Capitol Hill
The Defense Data Network
The White House
At least 2 viruses infiltrated Allied computers in
1991 during the Gulf War
There are an estimated 30,000 computer
viruses in existence
Over 300 new ones are created each month
The first virus was created to show
loopholes in software
A biological virus injects itself into a cell
and uses the cell's existing chemistry to
reproduce itself.
A computer virus “piggybacks” on top of
a program or document and “reproduces” (executes).
Once a virus is running, it’s able to infect
other programs or documents.
Worms and Trojan horses are actually more common
today than viruses.
Antivirus programs should offer protection against all
viruses, worms, and Trojans.
All of these types of programs are called malware.
A virus first runs when another program is executed.
The virus loads itself into memory and looks to see if
it can find any other programs on the disk.
If it finds one, it modifies the program, adding the
virus code to the new program.
Then the virus launches
the "real program."
The user does not know that the virus even ran.
The virus has now reproduced itself, so now
two programs are infected.
The next time either of them is executed,
they infect other programs, and the
cycle continues.
When the infected program is distributed by flash
drive, uploaded to a website, or FTP’d as an
executable, other computers and programs get
infected. This is how a virus is spread.
Viruses are programmed to damage the computer by
destroying programs, deleting files, or reformatting
the hard drive.
There are many viruses operating on the Internet
today, and new ones are introduced every day.
Unlike biological viruses, computer viruses simply do
not evolve by themselves.
Computer viruses do not spontaneously generate,
nor are they likely to be created by bugs in regular
programming.
They are deliberately created by programmers, or by
people who use virus creation software.
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Computer viruses can only do what the
programmers have programmed them to do.
Virus writers can have various reasons for creating
and spreading malware.
Viruses have been written as research projects, as
pranks, or as malicious vandalism. Viruses have
been written to attack the products of specific
companies such as Microsoft.
Viruses have been written to distribute political
messages, or to gain financially from identity theft,
through spyware, or via cryptoviral extortion. In this
this type of attack a virus, worm, or trojan encrypts
the victim's files and the user must
pay the malware author to receive
the key to get the files unencrypted.