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"He did it! No, you did it! It was
them, they did it!" It goes on and on the blame for Viruses in your
computer. How often
do the people who use your computer decide that they are going to
download a virus and infect your computer, destroying all your
documents, family photos, favorite web sites, great games?
Probably less than one percent out of a million.
What is a virus anyway and how does it get into your computer?
A computer virus is a computer program that
can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or
knowledge of the owner. The term "virus" is also commonly but
erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware
programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can
only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable
code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance
because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on
a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses
can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting
files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by
another computer. By
definition a computer virus somehow gets into your computer without your
permission or knowledge.
But then you ask the question,
how did it get into my computer, I have an antivirus?
That is the number one question, first let me say that no antivirus is
100% effective. Second, you
were probably tricked into
letting the virus in your computer.
Some of the worst virus and worm infections are attributed to
email messages. The vast
bulk of viruses are distributed as attachments to trick email messages.
Now let me tell you really what the antivirus companies are not
telling you. Virus can be
transmitted by pieces of code that will hide in messages that you read,
in header files that you cannot see and when the last message like
You’ve won, or Update now or It’s free, the virus executes and you are
sending nasty messages to everyone you know in your email and instant
message program or your computer crashes or you get error messages that
do not make any sense.
So in answer to the question a
computer virus gets into your computer with the
antivirus working by tricking you into doing something or it is not a
virus until it executes.
Then I am asked,
Why
do people create computer viruses?
answer from www.technibble.com
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To take control of a computer and use it for specific tasks
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To generate money
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To steal sensitive information (credit card numbers, passwords,
personal details, data etc.)
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To prove a point, to prove it can be done, to prove ones skill or
for revenge purposes
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To cripple a computer or network
To Take Control of a Computer and Use It for Specific Tasks
This is the most common type of virus, which is better classified as a
Trojan. These types of viruses are usually downloaded unknowingly by the
computer user thinking that the file is something else, such as a file
sent from a instant messenger friend or email attachment.
Once the host computer has been infected (known as a zombie computer),
the Trojan joins a private chat channel and awaits orders from its
“Zombie Master”. This Zombie Master, who is often the virus creator,
will gather thousands of infected machines called a botnet and use them
to mount attacks on web servers. The Zombie Master can command each of
these infected computers will send a tiny bit of information to a web
server - because there are potentially thousands of computers doing this
at once, it often overloads the server.
The Zombie Master may want to do this to another website because it is a
rival website, a figurehead website (such as whitehouse.gov) or it may
be part of an extortion plan. “Send me $5000 or your Toy selling
website will be offline over the Christmas holidays”.
The Zombie Master can also use these infected
computers to send spam while the zombie master remains anonymous and the
blame goes to the infected computers.
To Generate Money
These types of infections often masquerade as free spyware or virus
removal tools (known as rogue ware). Once ran, these fake applications
will “scan” your computer and say it found has some viruses (even if
there aren’t any) and in order to remove them, you must pay for the full
version of the application. A good example of such a infection is called
Myzor.fk which
we have
written about in the past.
Steal sensitive information
These types of viruses can sniff the traffic going in or out of a
computer for interesting information such as passwords or credit card
numbers and send it back to the virus creator. These types of viruses
often use key logging as a method of stealing information where it
maintains a record of everything that is typed into the computer such as
emails, passwords, home banking data, instant messenger chats etc..
The above mentioned method also allows an attacker to gather an
incredible amount of data about a person which can be used for identity
theft purposes.
To Prove a Point, To Prove it Can Be Done, To Prove Ones Skill or For
Revenge Purposes
A perfect example of this type of virus was the famous MS.Blaster virus
(aka Lovesan) which infected hundreds of thousands of computers back in
August 2003.This virus would cause the system to restart after 60
seconds and had two hidden messages written in its code:
One was “I just want to say LOVE YOU SAN!!” which is why the
virus is sometimes called Lovesan, and the other message was “billy
gates why do you make this possible ? Stop making money and fix your
software!!”
It is believed that purpose of this virus was to prove how easily
exploitable a Windows system is.
To Cripple a Computer or Network
Few viruses now days are intended to disable a computer because it stops
viruses ability to spread to other computers. Computer crippling viruses
still exist, but nowhere near as common as the viruses mentioned above.
The worst type of computer crippling viruses were back in the days of
the 486 computers where the virus would overwrite the Master Boot Record
(MBR) of the computer which would often prevent the computer from
starting up at all.
Unlike computer crippling viruses, network crippling viruses are all too
common now days. Most viruses that are designed to launch a Denial of
Service attack will cause a significant load on a computer network,
often bringing it down completely.
Then there are the
conspiracy theories, rival companies, and the antivirus companies
themselves.
How do I stop the
Viruses from infecting my computer is the next question.
That depends on who you ask.
But the answer is simple.
Use an antivirus that protects your browser, your email and your
entire computer. A lot of the
free antiviruses will protect your computer system but not your online
email like yahoo, or hotmail or Gmail.
A lot of antiviruses will not protect your instant messages also.
So get the right protection, for your whole computer,
according to your resources.
If you are using a P3 computer with 256 megabytes of ram then the
Norton suite will probably slow your computer to a crawl.
In order to protect yourself, you need at least 512 megabytes for
XP, 1 gigabyte is better.
Buy your antivirus, either from the store or an OEM (which is cheaper).
Last bit of advice is most antivirus you download for
free from the peer to peer
sites has time delay exploits in them and will when you need it the most
not protect you and infect you.
-D.
Daglow
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