Difference between revisions of "The dying art of computer viruses"

Latest revision as of 09:09, 22 November 2022

History

Timeline of Viruses and Worms (wikipedia)

From Gramam Cluley [1]: In those days, it was often hard not to be aware that you had a virus. The New Zealand virus declared ‘Your PC is now Stoned!’, the Italian virus bounced a ping-pong ball across your screen, and the Maltese Casino virus played Russian Roulette with your file allocation table.

Sure, all of these viruses were irritating – they spread without your consent, and ate up system resources – but only some of them were deliberately destructive. In many ways, a lot of the malware could justly be compared to an electronic form of graffiti – the Green Caterpillar, for instance, which crawled across your screen, eating up letters and pooping them out in a shade of brown.

Even as malware turned nastier and more destructive, there was still some art to be seen. Virus-writing gangs like Phalcon/SKISM used colourful ANSI-style art to declare that they had infected your computer. Viruses like Phantom, with its use of 256-colour palette cycling and displaying a large skull, and Spanska, with its simulated flight across the Mars landscape, probably demonstrated a high point for art in viruses.

Working of a Virus

Collections

Setting up the lab environment

Download virtualbox
Create a freedos environment following: http://freedos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox
As virtual disk choose the supplied VDOS.vdi (or new if you want to set it up yourself)

A virus in processing

It is even possible to write a virus in processing. See an example in the WdKA Github, but remember, for educational purposes only. Use with care!
https://github.com/mywdka/ProcessingVirus

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-= History =
+== History ==
 * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_viruses_and_worms Timeline of Viruses and Worms (wikipedia)]
-= Working of a Virus =
+From Gramam Cluley [https://www.virusbulletin.com/virusbulletin/2013/08/dying-art-computer-viruses]:
+In those days, it was often hard not to be aware that you had a virus. The New Zealand virus declared ‘Your PC is now Stoned!’, the Italian virus bounced a ping-pong ball across your screen, and the Maltese Casino virus played Russian Roulette with your file allocation table.
+Sure, all of these viruses were irritating – they spread without your consent, and ate up system resources – but only some of them were deliberately destructive. In many ways, a lot of the malware could justly be compared to an electronic form of graffiti – the Green Caterpillar, for instance, which crawled across your screen, eating up letters and pooping them out in a shade of brown.
+Even as malware turned nastier and more destructive, there was still some art to be seen. Virus-writing gangs like Phalcon/SKISM used colourful ANSI-style art to declare that they had infected your computer. Viruses like Phantom, with its use of 256-colour palette cycling and displaying a large skull, and Spanska, with its simulated flight across the Mars landscape, probably demonstrated a high point for art in viruses.
+== Working of a Virus ==
 * [http://virus.wikidot.com/virus Description of Virus types on virus.wikidot.com]
+* [[media:The_Technology_and_Evolution_of_an_Artificial_Life_Form.pdf]]
+== Collections ==
+* [http://vxheaven.org/ VXHeaven]
+* [https://www.youtube.com/user/danooct1/playlists youtube user danooctl shows many viruses in action]
+== Setting up the lab environment ==
+* Download [https://www.virtualbox.org/ virtualbox]
+* Create a freedos environment following: http://freedos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox
+* As virtual disk choose the supplied VDOS.vdi (or new if you want to set it up yourself)
+== A virus in processing ==
+It is even possible to write a virus in processing.
+See an example in the WdKA Github, but remember, for educational purposes only. Use with care!
+<br>[https://github.com/mywdka/ProcessingVirus https://github.com/mywdka/ProcessingVirus]
+[[Category:Research]][[Category:Processing]]