LebGeeks

samer

Admin

20 Years Of PC Viruses

From " Brain " to the latest virus threats, techweb covers 20 years of viral activities. A very interesting article. http://www.techweb.com/showArticle.jhtm … =160200003

The 10 Most Destructive PC Viruses Of All Time
CIH (1998)
Estimated Damage: 20 to 80 million dollars worldwide, countless amounts of PC data destroyed

Melissa (1999)
Estimated Damage: 300 to 600 million dollars

ILOVEYOU (2000)
Estimated Damage: 10 to 15 billion dollars

...

nuclearcat

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

I remember good old time... team SGWW, how OneHalf was built. It was really state of art. Virus was encrypting disk block by block, by it was transparent for OS, OS was still thinking everything fine. Also when you access floppy, only at this time, virus insert data to floppy boot block and files, which you open. Then system become too slow, user start to worry. But one wrong step, and ur data lost. First antiviruses was curing virus, and when they just remove it, there is no code to decrypt disk, cause also virus was contain dynamic encryption block, with polymorphic code. So bye-bye data. It was nice challenge. And smart admins always was able to save and disinfect data even without antivirus. It was challenge to reverse polymorphic code virus, and make him to decrypt disk and disappear. Or to recover by HEX editor. Or recover by creating another "animal", who search and destory enemy while you computers is working.

Now it is kid games. Idiot users opening .exe attaches. Stupid viruses is active, and loading system by their stupid flooding and scanning (directly you feel smth wrong from start). Not need for polymorphic code, no need for encryption, just infection and stupid active flooding to infect more pc's. It is DUMB, and even kid able to do such viruses.

rolf

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

I remember good old time... team SGWW, how OneHalf was built. It was really state of art. Virus was encrypting disk block by block, by it was transparent for OS, OS was still thinking everything fine. Also when you access floppy, only at this time, virus insert data to floppy boot block and files, which you open. Then system become too slow, user start to worry. But one wrong step, and ur data lost. First antiviruses was curing virus, and when they just remove it, there is no code to decrypt disk, cause also virus was contain dynamic encryption block, with polymorphic code. So bye-bye data. It was nice challenge. And smart admins always was able to save and disinfect data even without antivirus. It was challenge to reverse polymorphic code virus, and make him to decrypt disk and disappear. Or to recover by HEX editor. Or recover by creating another "animal", who search and destory enemy while you computers is working.

Now it is kid games. Idiot users opening .exe attaches. Stupid viruses is active, and loading system by their stupid flooding and scanning (directly you feel smth wrong from start). Not need for polymorphic code, no need for encryption, just infection and stupid active flooding to infect more pc's. It is DUMB, and even kid able to do such viruses.

nice, that is the smartest way to make a virus. It encrypts your data, and when you disk is 99% full, the virus erases itself permanently from the disk and stays only in memory. On the next restart all your data is gone forever :)
It could probably be done on nowadays computers without the users noticing a slowdown.

True some viruses today are so stupid, they do 100 pings a second and bring down routers. Next thing network admin launches a sniffer and sees it.

nuclearcat

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

I remember, at that time all OS was running from floppies. I was able to detect by sound of floppy, when OS starting, is it infected, and if infected - it is regular boot block virus, or onehalf :)

Padre

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

those were the days .....
today it's more like worms, not viruses .... they dont really contain much state of the art coding. it's some API's , couple of nice and sexy messages, and a copy pasted exploit

mahdoum

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

Has anyone read Digital Fortress by Dan Brown?

samer

Admin

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

nope, though i'm planning to read it soon..

mahdoum

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

really good book ;) finished it in 2 days

rolf

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

I visited that site and there were some screenshots of old viruses in action.
The most funny was the virus that asked you to solve some math addition every time you typed a command, and the command would not run unless you type the right answer.
ha imagine how frustrating that is :)

samer

Admin

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

@mahdoum: i started it two days ago, i'm on page 300 -- really nice book :) (maybe i'll start a topic about it)

mahdoum

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

yeah it really is a nice book, i read 200 pages in 2 days, and on the last day read 400 pages

mir

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

nuclearcat : I remember good old time
Padre : those were the days .....

Umm.. guys .. computer viruses are not nice.. they are not good things to remember
at least for most of the people  .. unless....

:S well guys, do you have physical copy of the book.. did u download it from somewhere
can i borrow it after ur done... for how much $ can i get it
you guys really read a lot .. wow..

yalla post what it is about  .. still waiting for  that post samer

Padre

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

if u want i'll give ya an ecopy i just found, it's pretty decent
but i dont really have the time to read anything now ... just too busy

samer

Admin

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

http://www.lebgeeks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=13757

mir

Member

Re: 20 Years Of PC Viruses

Oh! that will be great  Padre if you can give me ur decent copy

Padre is busy .. umm .. what are you up to man ... does not sound good

check ur mail