VX Heavens

Recently we have seen a drastic change in virus coding and it will happen again.

This paper tries to summarize the possible prospective ideas that are likely to be used by the virus writers in the future and to suggest what kind of measures could be taken against them.

Between 1983 and 1986, a series of consecutive publications officially announced the cause of AIDS, now attributed to the retrovirus known as HIV. In the same period, Fred Cohen introduced a "major security problem called virus."1 Although his description was rudimentary and, according to some computer virus analysts, not fully accurate,2 it was immediately adopted universally. "Computer viruses" and other electronic-based "anomalous" agents were soon proclaimed a "high tech disease."

[...] The Internet currently plays a comparatively small role in the spread of viruses. No common virus today is network-aware; all of them require help (generally accidental help) from users in order to spread [...]

In this paper, we discuss current trends in computer virus research. We begin with a quick review of the theoretical and practical history of viruses. Next we discuss recent results in the two major areas of current work; defending against malicious viruses; and designing useful viruses for efficient parallel processing. Finally we close by discussing future research topics.

[...] Without the aid of a crystal ball, it is unwise to try and be too specific about what is likely to happen. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a broad assessment of future virus developments [...]

I agreed with Navrhar to write some real hard-core sci-fi about future of viruses that can be. I bring you some ideas that can be really good, if you can write 'em. I have no time left for it, Navrhar has no morale anymore for it. But all of them we solved already some time ago, but you should think about them for your own and you can be really smashing. Thats the reason I decided to write something about it: everyone is coding yet-another-poly-windows-pe-outlook-worm. Aren't you bored of it? All the time replicating some already present ideas? Don't you want to develop something really new. Here we have some ideas that are userfull and realiseable. Do it on your own...

When the average computer user can tell you the name of the latest major Internet worm, it becomes clear that we are not winning the war against Malicious Mobile Code. With the billions of dollars spent annually by the antivirus community and operating system manufactures on new and innovative countermeasures to stop viruses and worms, one is tempted to ask is the war even winnable? Is the issue simply one of careless users taking unnecessary risks, or is there something fundamentally broken in the way in which we attempt to defend against the onslaught of new viruses?In this article, these issues will be examined by looking not at the current threat profile, but at the different ways in which we defend our systems and their weaknesses. By examining the problem from this direction, it is possible to build up a list of requirements for solutions of the future - essentially, what functionality tomorrow's anti-virus software will need to have to keep us one step ahead of the next generation of viruses and worms.

Since the birth of the computer virus over a decade ago, there has been many additions to the reseviour of available technologies to incorporate into a virus. However, the effectiveness of each technology is no longer questioned, a super virus is assumed to have basically all the technologies known to man.

Since the beginning of documented times man has been trying to simplify things. This process requires abstract thinking. Coming up with new ideas outside of the norms.Creativity. This process has caused humanity to advance far beyond its roots of basic needs and survival. Although living in a world based on technology, new problems have arose. The rate seems faster than our ability to solve and correct the obstacles. Has the modern society created a problem with no solution? A world of striving towards perfecting a system that should instead be torn down...

In this paper, we explore the current and potential future landscape of the malicious code problem. We first discuss each of the known types of malicious code threats (both viruses and Trojans) and attempt to assess their possible growth in the future. We also speculate on potential future malicious code threats. We then cover the various delivery mechanisms by which a user might receive each of these threats. Next, we discuss current and possible future payloads that could be delivered to users through each of these malicious mechanisms. Finally, we suggest a variety of possible technology options that could be used to combat each of these threats.

Technical accounts of computer viruses usually focus on the microscopic details of individual viruses: their structure, their function, the type of host programs they infect, etc. The media tends to focus on the social implications of isolated scares. Such views of the virus problem are useful, but limited in scope.One of the missions of IBM's High Integrity Computing Laboratory is to understand the virus problem from a global perspective, and to apply that knowledge to the development of anti-virus technology and measures. We have employed two complementary approaches: observational and theoretical virus epidemiology 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Observation of a large sample population for six years has given us a good understanding of many aspects of virus prevalence and virus trends, while our theoretical work has bolstered this understanding by suggesting some of the mechanisms that govern the behavior that we have observed.In this paper, we review some of the main ndings of our previous work. In brief, we show that, while thousands of DOS viruses exist today, less than 10% of these have actually been seen in real virus incidents. Viruses do not tend to spread wildly. Rather, it takes months or years for a virus to become widespread, and even the most common a ect only a small percentage of all computers. Theoretical models, based on biological epidemiology, can explain these major features of computer virus spread.Then, we demonstrate some interesting trends that have become apparent recently. We examine several curious features of viral prevalence over the past few years, including remarkable peaks in virus reports, the rise of boot-sector-infecting viruses to account for almost all incidents today, and the near extinction of le-infecting viruses. We show that anti-virus software can be remarkably e ective within a given organization, but that it is not responsible for the major changes in viral prevalence worldwide. Instead, our study suggests that changes in the computing environment, including changes in machine types and operating systems, are the most important e ects in uencing what kinds of viruses become prevalent and how their prevalence changes.Finally, we look at current trends in operating systems and networking, and attempt to predict their e ect on the nature and extent of the virus problem in the coming years.