What is a 

VIRUS?
A Computer virus is a malware program that, when
executed, replicates by inserting copies of itself
(possibly modified) into other computer programs,
data files, or the boot sector of the hard drive;
when this replication succeeds, that affected the
areas are then said to be "infected“
It is a self-replicating program that can cause
damage to data and files stored on your computer.
 History of virus
The term “Computer virus” was formally
defined by Fred Cohen in 1983, while he
performed academic experiments on a
Digital Equipment Corporation VAX system.
Viruses are classified as being one of two
types: research or “in the wild”.
The first computer viruses were developed
in the early 1980s. The first viruses found in
the wild were Apple II viruses, such as Elk
Cloner, which was reported in 1981.
 Function of virus
Viruses function have “evolved” over the Infect the
efforts to make the code more difficult to detect,
disassemble, and eradicate.
6 new viruses are found each day. 57000 known
virus programs are in existence.
These are programs written by programmers with
great programming skills who are motivated by the
need for a challenge or to cause destruction.
One manner of classifying viruses is to
analyze whether they reside in binary
executables (such as .EXE or .COM files), data
files (such as Microsoft Word documents or
PDF files), or in the boot sector of the host's
hard drive Resident vs. non-resident viruses:
Resident viruses overwrite interrupt
handling code or other functions, and when
the operating system attempts to access the
target file or disk sector, the virus code
intercepts the request and redirects the
control flow to the replication module,
infecting the target.
Many common applications, such as Microsoft
Outlook and Microsoft Word, allow macro
programs to be embedded in documents or
emails, so that the programs may be run
automatically when the document is opened.

This is one of the reasons that it is dangerous to

open unexpected attachments in e-mails Boot
sector viruses: Boot sector viruses specifically
target the boot sector/Master Boot Record
(MBR) of the host's hard drive or removable
storage media (flash drives, floppy disks, etc.).
 History of some of the most
famous viruses and malware
1949 – 1966 – Self- Reproducing Automata: Self-
replicating programs were established in 1949, to
produce a large number of viruses, John von
Neumann, whose known to be the “Father of
Cybernetics”, wrote an article on the “Theory of Self-
Reproducing Automata” that was published in 1966
1959 – Core Wars: A computer game was
programmed in Bell Laboratory by Victor Vygotsky,
H. Douglas McIlroy and Robert P Morris. They named
it Core Wars. In this game, infectious programs
named organisms competed with the processing
time of PC
1971 – The Creeper: Bob Thomas developed an experimental
self-replicating program. It accessed through ARPANET (The
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and copied to a
remote host systems with TENEX operating system. A message
displayed that “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!”. Another
program named Reaper was created to delete the existing
harmful program the Creeper
1974 – Wabbit (Rabbit): This infectious program was
developed to make multiple copies of itself on a computer
clogging the system reducing the performance of the computer
1974 – 1975 – ANIMAL: John Walker developed a program called
ANIMAL for the UNIVAC 1108. This was said to be a non-
malicious Trojan that is known to spread through shared tapes.
1981- Elk Cloner: A program called the “Elk Cloner” was
developed by Richard Skrenta for the Apple II Systems. This was
created to infect Apple DOS 3.3. These programs started to
spread through files and folders that are transferred to other
computers by floppy disk
1983 This was the year when the term “Virus” was coined by
Frederick Cohen for the computer programs that are infectious
as it has the tendency to replicate
1986 – Brain: This is a virus also known as the “Brain
boot sector”, that is compatible with IBM PC was
programmed and developed by two Pakistani
programmers Basit Farooq Alvi, and his brother, Amjad
Farooq Alvi.
1987- Lehigh: This virus was programmed to infect
command.com files from Yale University.
Cascade: This virus is a self-encrypted file virus which
was the outcome of IBM’s own antivirus product.
Jerusalem Virus: This type of virus was first detected in
the city of Jerusalem. This was developed to destroy all
files in an infected computers on the thirteenth day that
falls on a Friday.
1988 – The Morris Worm: This type of worm was created by Robert
Tappan Morris to infect DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD
UNIX through the Internet. This is best known for exploiting the
computers that are prone to buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
1990 Symantec launched one of the first antivirus programs
called the Norton Antivirus, to fight against the infectious viruses.
The first family of polymorphic virus called the Chameleon was
developed by Ralf Burger.
1995 – Concept: This virus name Concept was created to spread
and attack Microsoft Word document
1996 A macro virus known as Laroux was
developed to infect Microsoft Excel Documents, A
virus named Baza was developed to infect
Windows 95 and Virus named Staog was created to
infect Linux
1998 CIH Virus: The release of the first version of
CIH viruses developed by Chen Ing Hau from
Taiwan. IT CORRUPTS THE DATA
1999 Happy99: This type of worm was developed
to attach itself to emails with a message Happy
New Year. Outlook Express and Internet Explorer
on Windows 95 and 98 were affected
2000 – ILOVEYOU: The virus is capable of deleting
files in JPEGs, MP2, or MP3 formats
2001 – Anna Kournikova: This virus was spread by
emails to the contacts in the compromised address
book of Microsoft Outlook. The emails purported to
contain pictures of the very attractive female tennis
player, but in fact hid a malicious virus.
2002 – LFM-926: This virus was developed to infect
Shockware Flash files.
Beast or RAT: This is backdoor Trojan horse and is
capable of infecting all versions of Windows OS.
2004 – My Doom: This infectious worm also called the
Novang. This was developed to share files and permits
hackers to access to infected computers. It is known as
the fastest mailer worm. service attack of “Mail
Transaction Failed”
2005 – Samy XXA: This type of virus was developed
to spread faster and it is known to infect the
Windows family.
2006 – OSX/Leap-A: This was the first ever known
malware discovered against Mac OS X.
Nyxem: This type of worm was created to spread by
mass-mailing, destroying Microsoft Office files.
2007 – Storm Worm: This was a fast-spreading email
spamming threat against Microsoft systems that
compromised millions of systems. Storm worm as
the number of this dangerous malware infected PCs
was close to 10 million.
Zeus: This is a type of Trojan that infects used capture login
credentials from banking web sites and commit financial
fraud.
2008 – Koobface: This virus was developed and created to
target Facebook and My Space users.
2010 – Kenzero: The is a virus that spreads online between
sites through browsing history.
2013 – Cryptolocker: This is trojan horse encrypts the files
infected machine and demands a ransom to unlock the files
2014 – Backoff: Malware designed to compromise Point-of-
Sale (POS) systems to steal credit card data.
Today the computer hacker introduced the virus in three
different ways The Virus, Trojan, Spyware are used crack a
particular or specific file hack and use the Application (i.e.
Cost Antivirus, Programs, Social sites) in “legal” actions
within the context of the operating system and to share
the file with each other and etc. . While more stringent
controls are in place on multi-tasking, multi-user
operating systems, configuration errors, and security
holes (security bugs) make viruses on these systems more
than theoretically possible.