Computer viruses are almost as old as personal computers themselves, and their evolution was only hastened by the birth of Internet. And within each code is a story about its author, about the time it was written, and about the state of computing when it terrorized our hard drives.
The following screenshots illustrate the history of viruses in a few delicate code fragments, so enjoy. But this obligatory warning must be here: Please, for God's sake, do not try these at home.
4. Jerusalem
As one of the first MS-DOS viruses, Jerusalem affected many countries, universities, institutions and companies worldwide, infecting thousands of computers. Jerusalem was merciless: On Friday the 13th, the virus deleted all executed program files on the infected hard drive. Supposedly in the name of AL AH:
This early Internet worm infected over 6,000 computers in the US, including some of NASA?s. The code itself was flawed, accidentally sending millions of copies of itself to different network computers, paralysing all network resources, causing almost 100 million dollars damage. The fateful words at the end of the code snippet say it all: ?Don?t know how many??
3. Sasser
Created by 17 year old German student, Sven Jaschan, Sasser attacked Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines by exploiting a vulnerability, as seen below:
2. Stuxnet
Stuxnet (and its evil son, DuQu) is often referred to as the first ?cyber super weapon.? The virus was a US and Israeli governmental worm designed to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, but unsurprisingly, it accidentally spread beyond its intended targets. Here is a nice snippet from this digital sword:
1. CryptoLocker
CryptoLocker is a form of Trojan horse ransomware targeted at computers running Windows. It uses several methods to spread itself, such as email, and once a computer is infected, it will proceed to encrypt certain files on the hard drive and any mounted storage connected to it with RSA public key cryptography. While it is easy enough to remove the malware from the computer, the files will still remain encrypted. The only way to unlock the files is to pay a ransom by a deadline. If the deadline is not met, the ransom will increase significantly or the decryption keys deleted. The ransom usually amount to $400 in prepaid cash or bitcoin.
(sorry, no image)
The ransom operation was eventually stopped when law enforcement agencies and security companies managed to take control part of the botnet operating CryptoLocker and Zeus. Evgeniy Bogachev, the ring leader, was charged and the encryption keys were released to the affected computers. From data collected from the raid, the number of infections is estimated to be 500,000, with the number of those who paid the ransom to be at 1.3%, amounting to $3 million.
The following screenshots illustrate the history of viruses in a few delicate code fragments, so enjoy. But this obligatory warning must be here: Please, for God's sake, do not try these at home.
4. Jerusalem
As one of the first MS-DOS viruses, Jerusalem affected many countries, universities, institutions and companies worldwide, infecting thousands of computers. Jerusalem was merciless: On Friday the 13th, the virus deleted all executed program files on the infected hard drive. Supposedly in the name of AL AH:
This early Internet worm infected over 6,000 computers in the US, including some of NASA?s. The code itself was flawed, accidentally sending millions of copies of itself to different network computers, paralysing all network resources, causing almost 100 million dollars damage. The fateful words at the end of the code snippet say it all: ?Don?t know how many??
3. Sasser
Created by 17 year old German student, Sven Jaschan, Sasser attacked Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines by exploiting a vulnerability, as seen below:
2. Stuxnet
Stuxnet (and its evil son, DuQu) is often referred to as the first ?cyber super weapon.? The virus was a US and Israeli governmental worm designed to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, but unsurprisingly, it accidentally spread beyond its intended targets. Here is a nice snippet from this digital sword:
1. CryptoLocker
CryptoLocker is a form of Trojan horse ransomware targeted at computers running Windows. It uses several methods to spread itself, such as email, and once a computer is infected, it will proceed to encrypt certain files on the hard drive and any mounted storage connected to it with RSA public key cryptography. While it is easy enough to remove the malware from the computer, the files will still remain encrypted. The only way to unlock the files is to pay a ransom by a deadline. If the deadline is not met, the ransom will increase significantly or the decryption keys deleted. The ransom usually amount to $400 in prepaid cash or bitcoin.
(sorry, no image)
The ransom operation was eventually stopped when law enforcement agencies and security companies managed to take control part of the botnet operating CryptoLocker and Zeus. Evgeniy Bogachev, the ring leader, was charged and the encryption keys were released to the affected computers. From data collected from the raid, the number of infections is estimated to be 500,000, with the number of those who paid the ransom to be at 1.3%, amounting to $3 million.
