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«Computer virus hits again» (0) 2.5Kb 4954 hits
http://www.textfiles.com/virus/peacevir.vir

«Ludwig Shelters Under First Amendment» (0) 3.04Kb 4618 hits
Virus Bulletin, June 1992, p.9 (1992)

Mark Ludwig, author of The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses (see VB, March 1992, pp 17-18) is pleading the First Amendment in order to justify the publication of the book. In a communication on Compuserve he stated `I have consulted with a lawyer regarding the legality of writing/publishing viruses, and have found that among the legal community, it seems unanimous that writing and publishing viruses, per se, is TOTALLY protected by the First Amendment.'

«Darwin» (0) 9.79Kb 2543 hits
Software: Practice and Experience, Vol. 2, Issue 1, pp.93-96 (January/March 1972) (1972)

Ten years ago, Vyssotsky (V. A. Vyssotsky, Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey.) invented something completely different from the usual computer games. Darwin is a game between computer programs as programs. The object is survival; programs may ‘kill’ one another, and may create copies of themselves in unoccupied store.

«Computer viruses (BMJ 296-013)» (0) 4.55Kb 4122 hits
British Medical Journal, vol. 297, pp.246-247 (1988)

Some time ago an intensive care unit in Glasgow found that its normally well ordered computer network was becoming erratic: data were being corrupted and files were being lost. Recently a general practitioner who used an IBM compatible computer for his repeat prescriptions discovered that important files were being corrupted. In both cases a computer virus was at work. Eventually the viruses were identified and exterminated, but not quickly and not without the loss of data.

«A Specter Is Haunting Networks - The Specter of Viruses, Hidden in Horses» (0) 4.8Kb 3592 hits
Infoworld, Vol. 10, No. 10, p.16 (1988)

PC viruses are in the news. A spate of recent articles has left many users with the impression that a mysterious cancer is gobbling up computer data left and right.It's time for network managers, bulletin board enthusiasts, and anyone who shares programs or data with other PC users to understand how viruses work and how to confront them.

«The Evolution of Viruses and Worms» (0) 40.75Kb 19424 hits
Chapter from 'Statistical Methods in Computer Security' (2004)

Computer viruses and network worms have evolved through a continuous series of innovations, leading to the recent wave of fast-spreading and dangerous worms. A review of their historical development and recent outbreaks leads to a number of observations. First, while viruses were more common than worms initially, worms have become the predominant threat in recent years, coinciding with the growth of computer networking. Second, despite widespread use of firewalls and other network security equipment, worm outbreaks still occur and will likely continue to be a threat for the near future. Third, recent worms are appearing as a series of quick successive variants. Unlike the independent efforts of early viruses, these variants suggest an increasing level of coordination among worm creators. Fourth, recent worms have shown capabilities to spread faster and exploit more infection vectors. This trend implies a more urgent need for automated, coordinated protection measures. Finally, more dangerous payloads are becoming commonplace. This suggests that worm creators are using worms for other objectives than simply infection, such as data theft and setting up denial of service networks.

«You, Too, Can Write an Anna Worm» (0) 6.96Kb 7091 hits
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41817,00.html (2001)

The Anna Kournikova e-mail worm that whacked networks this week was not the work of a skilled cracker. It was created using one of the many virus-generating kits that are easily available on the Internet.

«A (long) story about an (old) Apple II virus» (0) 13.22Kb 7325 hits
news://alt.folklore.computers (1990)

I have been asked by Gene Spafford to write an article detailing the life story of a Virus I wrote for Dos 3.3 on the Apple ][ in December, 1981 for one of his journals. Spafford wants me to write the story up because it's the earliest documentable personal computer virus he's heard of. I'm trying to get more information that I plan to use to make that article more complete.

«A Core War bestiary of viruses, worms and other threats to computer memories» (0) 22.44Kb 5432 hits
Scientific American, 1985, v.252, N 3, pp. 14-19 (1985)

«In the game called Core War hostile programs engage in a battle of bits» (0) 22.76Kb 5199 hits
Scientific American, 1984, v.250, N 5, pp. 15-19 (1984)

«Of worms, viruses and Core War» (0) 21.28Kb 5481 hits
Scientific American, 1989, v.260, N 3, pp. 90-93 (1989)

«A program called MICE nibbles its way to victory at the first Core War tournament» (0) 16.16Kb 4939 hits
Scientific American, 1987, v.256, N 1, pp. 8-11 (1987)

«Viruses Are Good for You» (0) 57.45Kb 4776 hits
Wired magazine (1995)

Spawn of the devil, computer viruses may help us realize the full potential of the Net.

«Virus Wars: A Serious Warning» (0) 4.13Kb 2127 hits
PC Magazine (1988)

A new computer virus is infecting microcomputers around the world. Where is the utility that will prevent our PCs from becoming victims in this epidemic?

«Invasion of the Data Snatchers» (0) 25.82Kb 6808 hits
Time Magazine, Sep. 26, 1988, pp.62-67 (1988)

A "virus" epidemic strikes terror in the computer world

«You Must Be Punished» (0) 3.67Kb 4220 hits
Time Magazine, Sep. 26, 1988, p.44 (1988)

On Brain virus

«Does Your Computer Have a Virus?» (0) 14.53Kb 4468 hits
Los Angeles Times (1988)

Experts Debate Whether Electronic Attacks Are Urban Mythology or Threat to Security

«A strange story» (0) 19.42Kb 8824 hits
http://www.aspector.com/~brf/devstuff/rahab/rahab.html

My personal approach to the story that the BND (Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst) has stolen a mainframe computer virus I wrote and used it as a "weapon" against computer systems in the eastern countries.

«Effective and Inexpensive Methods Exist for Controlling Software Viruses» (0) 4.97Kb 3679 hits
Infoworld, Vol. 10, No. 19, p.51 (1988)

This is my final column, of four, on the topic of software viruses. The first three discussed fundamental technology, reproductive action, and anti-viral counter-measure issues. This column will discuss specific viruses and specific anti-viral countermeasures.

«The "Father Christmas worm"» (0) 22.8Kb 2146 hits
NASA Technical Reports, Published in the 12th National Computer Security Conference Proceedings (1989)

Three days before Christmas 1988, a computer worm was released on a very large international DECnet network. The worm reproduced itself and was received on an estimated 6,000 computer nodes worldwide. However, only a small percentage of these nodes actually executed the program. The computers that successfully ran the program would try to propagate the worm to other computer nodes.The worm was released onto the DECnet Intemet from a computer at a university in Switzerland. Within 10 minutes after it was released, the worm was detected on the Space Physics Analysis Network, or SPAN, which is NASA's largest space and Earth science network. Once the source program for the worm was captured, a procedural cure, using existing functionality of the computer operating systems, was quickly devised and distributed. A combination of existing computer security measures, the quick and accurate procedures devised to stop copies of the worm from executing, and the network itself, were used to rapidly provide the cure. These were the main reasons why the worm executed on such a small percentage of nodes.The purpose behind the worm was to send an electronic mall message to all users on the computer system running the worm. The message was a Christmas greeting and was signed "Father Christmas." This paper presents an overview of the analysis of the events concerning the worm based on an investigation that was made by the SPAN Security Team and provides some insight into future security measures that will be taken to handle computer worms and viruses that may hit similar networks in the future.

«A History Of Computer Viruses - Introduction» (0) 13.02Kb 6258 hits
Computers & Security, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp.412-415 (1997)

The following series of articles are taken from Harold's Computer Virus Handbook, published by Elsevier Advanced Technology in 1990. Viruses have moved on a long way since then, but the extracts published here provide a useful background in virus development, and contain much information that is still relevant today. It is also interesting to note that Harold introduces the Macro Virus concept a few years before it became more widely identified as a major problem.

«A History Of Computer Viruses - The Famous `Trio'» (0) 47.08Kb 5459 hits
Computers and Security, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp.416-429 (1997)

It was not until the fall of 1987 that computer viruses began to command worldwide attention in the popular press as well as in the trade and technical press. Late in 1987 computer viruses struck at two universities in the States and one in Israel.

«A History Of Computer Viruses: Three Special Viruses» (0) 29.82Kb 5074 hits
Computers and Security, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp.430-438 (1997)

There are several computer viruses that we have in executable form but whose existence in the business world cannot be satisfactorily confirmed.

«There's A Virus In My Software» (0) 9.99Kb 4893 hits
The Washington Post Weekly Edition, Page #38. May 23-29, 1988. (1988)

Tiny programs that are deliberately cause mischief are epidemic among computers and causing nervousness among those who monitor them. Since the first tests of the notion in 1983 that machines can catch and spread "information diseases," the computer world has reached the point at which as many as thirty instances of "computer virus" have been reported in the past year, affecting tens of thousands of U.S. computers alone.

«A Hygiene Lesson» (0) 5.36Kb 5564 hits
Communications of the ACM, Volume 32 Number 1, pp.3,6 (1989)

«The Executive Computer: A Virus Carries Fatal Complications» (0) 6.41Kb 1900 hits
New York Times, Technology, p. C-11 (1988)

AS long as programmers write programs, some unscrupulous people will concoct lethal ''computer viruses,'' software programs that use computer code to enter other programs and re-program them or destroy data. And some experts have concluded that no protection exists against such viruses. Imagine Wall Street's computers suddenly going berserk, executing thousands of bogus trades until the market is paralyzed, or your company's financial records being wiped out or altered into incoherence - or a space shuttle or a space-based weapon executing orders from such a program.

«Computer pranksters plant 'virus' in Macs» (0) 4.79Kb 5016 hits
San Francisco Examiner, February 11, 1988 page A-1 (1988)

A computer "virus" designed by adherents to a loose-knit philosophy called the Church of the SubGenius is creating an uproar on the nation's largest computer-information system, whose managers fear the bug may cause widespread destruction.

«Revenge of the nerds» (0) 11.48Kb 5657 hits
Washington Monthly, Vol. 20, No. 12, p. 21 (1989)

Revenge of the nerds; the real problem with computer viruses isn't genius programmers, it's careless ones

«Darwin, a Game of Survival of the Fittest among Programs» (0) 11.22Kb 9304 hits
(1971)

Darwin, a competition between self-reproducing programs, was conceived and played forty years ago at Bell Laboratories. The following pages were transcribed from a 1971 letter on which was based the first public description of Darwin, in the Computer Recreations column of Software - Practice and Experience, Volume 2 (1972) pages 91-96, written by ``Aleph-Null''. A decade further on, A. K. Dewdney's Scientific American column for May, 1984, described an updated version of the game, rechristened as Core Wars.

«Computer Systems Under Siege» (0) 13.18Kb 2088 hits
The New York Times, Sunday, January 31, 1988. Business Section, pp. 1,8 (1988)

This was one of the early articles on computer viruses in the popular press.

«Another Computing Platform Gets Its First Virus» (0) 2.91Kb 7032 hits
Newsbytes (2002)

SAPvir, the first virus to infect programs and reports used by the high-end SAP R/3 business information system, was posted to an online virus library this week.

«Approaching Zero: The Extraordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers, And Keyboard Criminals» (0) 467.72Kb 292 hits
Random House (1993)

Entertaining but hardly comprehensive, this study offers a somewhat European angle on the "technological counterculture." The authors draw on interviews and technical literature to examine the techniques of American and British phreakers (who tap into phone systems), profile "Captain Zap" - Pennsylvanian Ian Murphy, the first American computer hacker to be prosecuted - and describe the biggest international gathering of hackers, which took place in Amsterdam in 1989. Particularly interesting is an account of how Bulgaria, a would-be high-tech power, spawned hackers and a flood of computer viruses - approximately 200 since 1988. But Clough, an English accountant who has specialized in international computer security, and Mungo, an American freelance journalist, rarely offer in-depth portraits of their subjects, nor is their treatment sufficiently thorough to lend credence to their warning that we "may no longer be able to trust technology."

«A Threat from Malicious Software» (0) 6.16Kb 4694 hits
Time (1985)

Hackers are slipping dangerous miniprograms into big systems

«Joy of reproduction» (0) 1.41Kb 1779 hits
net.lang.c (1982)

Once the object cpp was installed, its bugs were thus self-reproducing, while all the source code remained clean-looking. (Things were even set up so the funny stuff would not be inserted if cc's -P option was used.)

«COMPUTE!'s computer viruses» (0) 333.94Kb 4464 hits
COMPUTE! Books (1988)

The authoritative guide to computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horse programs includes important information every computer user needs to protect against possible disaster.

«The Search for Den Zuk» (0) 7.2Kb 5699 hits
Virus Bulletin, February 1991, pp.7-8 (1991)

The virus known as Den Zuk was discovered over two years ago, and infections have occasionally been reported since then. It is a boot sector virus with one major effect and one, probably unintentional, harmful side-effect.One of the earliest reports of the virus came from Venezuela - leading to the incorrect conclusion that it was written there. The virus was instead written in Indonesia, where several related viruses are known to exist. It contains the following text message, which is not displayed.

«History of Computer Viruses» (0) 42.19Kb 5721 hits
(1992)

[...] Viral programs have a long, and sometimes honourable, history. (I do not intend, by this statement, to be involved in the current debate about whether or not viral programs serve a useful purpose outside research environments.) [...]

«A Brief History of PC Viruses» (0) 41.11Kb 13998 hits
Computer Fraud & Security Bulletin, vol 1993, issue 12, pp. 9-19 (1993)

[...] It all started in 1986. Basit and Amjad realised that the boot sector of a floppy diskette contained executable code, and this code is run whenever you start up the computer with a diskette in drive A. [...]

«The Cuckoo's Egg» (1) 722.41Kb 18234 hits
Pocket Books (1990)

A sentimental favorite, The Cuckoo's Egg seems to have inspired a whole category of books exploring the quest to capture computer criminals. Still, even several years after its initial publication and after much imitation, the book remains a good read with an engaging story line and a critical outlook, as Clifford Stoll becomes, almost unwillingly, a one-man security force trying to track down faceless criminals who've invaded the university computer lab he stewards. What first appears as a 75-cent accounting error in a computer log is eventually revealed to be a ring of industrial espionage, primarily thanks to Stoll's persistence and intellectual tenacity.

«The Evolution of 32-Bit Windows Viruses» (0) 17.16Kb 6778 hits
Windows 2000 Magazine Online (2000)

«Origin of the Cookie Monster» (0) 3.38Kb 5940 hits
http://www.multicians.org/cookie.html (1995)

This programm is often mentioned as one of the first known viruses. Indeed this is non viral terminal locking program written in PL/I for MIT Multics by Chris Tavares.

«With war near, U.S. raises terror alert level» (0) 3.34Kb 4240 hits
COMPUTERWORLD (2003)

On what now appears to be the eve of almost certain war in Iraq, the U.S. government last night raised the terrorism alert level to "orange" and is ordering stepped-up security for all the nation's critical infrastructure, including the Internet.

«The Animal Episode» (0) 18.06Kb 8088 hits
http://www.fourmilab.to/documents/univac/animal.html (1996)

The Computer Recreations column of Scientific American for March 1985 related a somewhat garbled version of the ANIMAL saga a little more than ten years after the events upon which it was based. David D. Clark of the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recounted the story in a letter to columnist A. K. Dewdney. Already, the ANIMAL story had begun to mutate into an "urban legend" of computerdom - moving through space and time, recalled by a "friend of a friend", and accreting additional details with every telling.

«Popp Goes The Weasel» (0) 9.07Kb 3529 hits
Virus Bulletin, January 1992, pp.2-3 (1992)

Dr. Joseph Lewis Popp, the alleged author of the notorious AIDS Information Diskette (VB, January 90, pp.2-10; VB, March 90, p.2) has been set free by a UK court. Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC at Southwark Crown Court dismissed the case against Popp, who faced charges on eleven counts of blackmail, after testimony from London psychiatrist Paul Bowden to the effect that Popp, 41, was psychologically unfit to plead. New Scotland Yard’s Computer Crime Unit initially had high hopes that Popp would stand trial; the CCU, in conjunction with the FBI with assistance from computer analyst Jim Bates had, over the course of a two year investigation, assembled a veritable barrage of forensic evidence to link Popp with the development and distribution in December 1989 of some 20,000 Trojanised diskettes.

37 authors, 44 titles