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Thread: Virus and Worms Celebrate their 20th Birthday Anniversary

  1. #1
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    Virus and Worms Celebrate their 20th Birthday Anniversary

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3257165.stm

    This week computer viruses celebrate 20 years of causing trouble and strife to all types of computer users.
    The above sentences are produced by the propaganda and indoctrination of people manipulating my mind since 1987, hence, I cannot be held responsible for this post\'s content - me

    www.elhalf.com

  2. #2
    Just a Virtualized Geek MrLinus's Avatar
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    I think they've (the worms and viruses) have been celebrating for about 5 years now.

    And they invited even more party guests. Now, the question is .. when will they go home so we can clean up this mess??

    That aside, it's interesting to see how they've changed over time and how much they affect what we do.
    Goodbye, Mittens (1992-2008). My pillow will be cold without your purring beside my head
    Extra! Extra! Get your FREE copy of Insight Newsletter||MsMittens' HomePage

  3. #3
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    They should do a nice video, with the top 100 virii and worms of the past 20 years...with the timeless ballad of "Wind Beneath My Wings" playing in the background, and show the top 100 frustration faces people make due to these little bastards of the computer world ...Sorry just me being silly.
    Creating further mindless stupidity....through mindless automation.

  4. #4
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    Ahh thats great. 20 Years is kinda uncomprehending to me right now. I think its eeally weird though, 10 years ago computers seemed really slow for me. Now its just amazing how far it has gone. Maybe in the next 20 years things will be different.

  5. #5
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    Computer Virii.

    Yes, I agree.

    The news will blow anything like this out of proportion.

    Its almost like chinese whispers with the media. Because they are always the last to know about computer related incidents by the time they get it "She sells sea shells on the sea shore" has become "Bill gates is the anti-christ and has a plan for world domination in involving the a-team a computer virus and a worm capable of firing cabbages."

    I mean why doesn't some newspaper hire an actual IT literate person to write about computer crime.

    Incidently the book that started the whole virus trend is available in e-book format

    Heres A Part of the same

    Preface to the Electronic Edition
    The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses has seen five
    good years in print. In those five years it has opened a door to
    seriously ask the question whether it is better to make technical
    information about computer viruses known or not.
    When I wrote it, it was largely an experiment. I had no idea
    what would happen. Would people take the viruses it contained and
    rewrite them to make all kinds of horrificly destructive viruses? Or
    would they by and large be used responsibly? At the time I wrote,
    no anti-virus people would even talk to me, and what I could find
    in print on the subject was largely unimpressive from a factual
    standpoint—lots of hype and fear-mongering, but very little solid
    research that would shed some light on what might happen if I
    released this book. Being a freedom loving and knowledge seeking
    American, I decided to go ahead and do it—write the book and get
    it in print. And I decided that if people did not use it responsibly, I
    would withdraw it.
    Five years later, I have to say that I firmly believe the book
    has done a lot more good than harm.
    On the positive side, lots and lots of people who desperately
    need this kind of information—people who are responsible
    for keeping viruses off of computers—have now been able to get
    it. While individual users who have limited contact with other
    computer users may be able to successfully protect themselves with
    an off-the-shelf anti-virus, experience seems to be proving that such
    is not the case when one starts looking at the network with 10,000
    users on it. For starters, very few anti-virus systems will run on
    10,000 computers with a wide variety of configurations, etc. Secondly,
    when someone on the network encounters a virus, they have
    to be able to talk to someone in the organization who has the
    detailed technical knowledge necessary to get rid of it in a rational
    way. You can’t just shut such a big network down for 4 days while
    someone from your a-v vendor’s tech support staff is flown in to
    clean up, or to catch and analyze a new virus.
    Secondly, people who are just interested in how things
    work have finally been able to learn a little bit about computer
    viruses. It is truly difficult to deny that they are interesting. The idea
    of a computer program that can take off and gain a life completely
    independent of its maker is, well, exciting. I think that is important.
    After all, many of the most truly useful inventions are made not by
    giant, secret, government-funded labs, but by individuals who have
    their hands on something day in and day out. They think of a way
    to do something better, and do it, and it changes the world. However,
    that will never happen if you can’t get the basic information about
    how something works. It’s like depriving the carpenter of his
    hammer and then asking him to figure out a way to build a better
    building.
    At the same time, I have to admit that this experiment called
    The Little Black Book has not been without its dangers. The Stealth
    virus described in its pages has succeeded in establishing itself in
    the wild, and, as of the date of this writing it is #8 on the annual
    frequency list, which is a concatenation of the most frequently
    found viruses in the wild. I am sorry that it has found its way into
    the wild, and yet I find here a stroke of divine humor directed at
    certain anti-virus people. There is quite a history behind this virus.
    I will touch on it only briefly because I don’t want to bore you with
    my personal battles. In the first printing of The Little Black Book,
    the Stealth was designed to format an extra track on the disk and
    hide itself there. Of course, this only worked on machines that had
    a BIOS which did not check track numbers and things like that—
    particularly, on old PCs. And then it did not infect disks every time
    they were accessed. This limited its ability to replicate. Some
    anti-virus developers commented to me that they thought this was
    The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses
    If anyone would like this e-mailed in full and in pdf pm me. (1.4 mb)

  6. #6
    Ahh thats great. 20 Years is kinda uncomprehending to me right now. I think its eeally weird though, 10 years ago computers seemed really slow for me. Now its just amazing how far it has gone. Maybe in the next 20 years things will be different.
    At least you did not date yourself

    -Cheers-

  7. #7
    Just Another Geek
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    Aaahhh. I can still remember the good ol' days when ByteBandit and LamerExterminator were running rampant. I think Lamer was one of the first polymorphic stealth virusses I ever saw. It was awesome to see how they did it. Now where did I leave my Seka assembler?
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

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