Viruses And Antivirus Computer Science Essay

In this report, you will find the important things that needed about viruses and antivirus. It covers the different type of viruses. For instance, file viruses and Macro virus. These can affect any organization data. Furthermore, it covered the history of viruses, how do viruses spread? and latest viruses prevalent in the world .

The computer’s network has become very wide interconnecting to any part in the global. Therefore, any networks connected to the Internet and without any security infrastructure becomes vulnerable to any attack from people who attempt to damage them by sending viruses. Computer Virus is small software programs that can infect or attack a computer and networks by making copies of itself or by executing , replicate itself without knowledge .It is called Computer Virus because it shares some of the features of biological viruses .The dangers of this virus that it can be modification or deletion data and attach itself by using software, documents and files to access in your computer. It creates a lot of problems:

The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet in the early 1970s. Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN in 1971. Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper. A program called “Rother J” was the first computer virus to appear “in the wild” ¿½ that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created.[citation needed] Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread via floppy disk.[6] This virus was created as a practical joke when Richard Skrenta was still in high school. It was injected in a game on a floppy disk. On its 50th use the Elk Cloner virus would be activated, infecting the computer and displaying a short poem beginning “Elk Cloner: The program with a personality.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus#History

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The first computer virus called Brain which created by two brothers who were running a computer store in Pakistan in 1986. They weaned a program that could spread form PC to another. Brain was harm less because it doesn’t delete the files in the computer and move on . In addition it is too easy to be discovered by the infected users by noticing the changed volume label .After Brain, there were many other viruses developed such as Cascade, Alameda , Jerusalem and Lehigh . These viruses were more dangerous than Brain because they were able to infect .COM and .EXE files while Brain can infect the boot sector .In 1992, the first virus came to infect documents and spreadsheets throughout Microsoft Office which is called Macro virus . The Macro is a group of user commands that can be stored and run to gather . It can infect Microsoft Word or Excel on a PC and also spread to another operation system such as Macintosh. It can be also repetitive tasks within one application, and it is very speeded to share documents between users .

When the internet became more people used this is a technology and also became more advanced but unfortunately , it is also helping these viruses to spread more and infect more users are used the internet through the emails such as Melisse virus . The Melisse virus is one of the document viruses that forward itself by emails. It is used the Outlook program to send an e-mail attachment such as Microsoft Word document to anyone . After that lot’s of viruses are spreading through emails in the world such as Love Bug , Love Letter, I Love You ¿½etc.

3.0. Type of viruses:

Recently, most of the viruses are increased through the internet. People who create them, they may attached viruses to email and distribute them everywhere. There are more than one virus that can replicate itself and destroy data or computer. They are different in shape and functionality. Below are the type of virus:

Boot Virus: This type of virus can infect floppy disk. Also, it infect boot records or master boot records in computer hard disks. Examples of boot viruses include: Disk Killer and Stone virus.

Program viruses: These kind of viruses infect executable program files running in the computer such extensions like (.BIN , .COM , .EXE and .SYS) files. Example of program viruses: Sunday and Cascade.

FAT Virus: This virus attack section of the hard disc where essential files are stored and it can be deleting files system.

Parasitic Viruses or File viruses: When you first run a program infected with a Parasitic virus, the virus is started first. The computer operating system sees the virus as part of the program you running and gives the virus the same right as the program. This right let the virus to copy itself.

Macro virus: This virus attack Microsoft Word documents. It is easily increase for any PC just by email. Example of macro viruses: Relax, Melissa.A and Bablas.

Worm: it is a program similar to a virus. It is able to replicate itself and deployed across the computer network. Examples of worms include: PSWBugbear.B, Lovgate.F, Trile.C, Sobig.D, Mapson.

4.0 How Do Viruses Spread?

Computer viruses are programs that must be triggered or somehow executed before they can infect your computer system and spread to others. Examples include opening a document infected with a “macro virus,” booting with a diskette infected with a “boot sector” virus, or double-clicking on an infected program file. Viruses can then be spread by sharing infected files on a diskette, network drive, or other media, by exchanging infected files over the Internet via e-mail attachments, or by downloading questionable files from the Internet.

http://www.hawaii.edu/itsdocs/gen/virus/#Spread

5.0 Latest viruses :

6.0 Anti-virus software

Anti-virus Software is a program installed onto your computer. It helps protect your computer from viruses and also can scan, detect and remove the viruses. It is supported by firewall software (which protects against hackers and some viruses) and can do several functions to protect your computer from viruses such as

¿½ It protects against Viruses ,Spyware , Trojan horses and Warms.

¿½ It protects against web based attacks and latest threats.

¿½ It helps secure and monitory your network.

¿½ It prevents others from taking control of your computer and using it to attack other computers .

¿½ And there are other functions ¿½etc .

7.0 Best antivirus prevalent in the world

– McAfee Antivirus .

– ESET NOD32 Antivirus .

– Norton 360 .

– Avira Antivirus .

– Kaspersky Internet Security .

– AVG Antivirus .

– Trend micro Antivirus .

Note : You can see the classification of the ten best anti-virus programs in 2009 by http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

8.0 Prevention of virus infection

1- Check all the disks( CDs,HDD,Floppy¿½etc) that were used in other PCs before using them.

2- Non-implementation of any program is taken from public networks such as the Internet before the examination.

3- The use of original software, or licensed.

4- Use a password to prevent hackers to access in your PC or copy important data .

5- To keep multiple backup copies of all your files before installing any new programs.

6- Processing computer with an anti-virus and always updated to ensure that detect new viruses.

7- Always updated operating system and support it by the windows defender .

8- Do not open any Email does not know the sender .

9.0 Literature Review

There are a lot of researchers have written about computer virus and antivirus :

1- Ferbrache, David. Pathology of Computer Viruses. Germany: Springer-Verlag, 1992.Fites, Philip, Peter Johnston, and Martin Kratz. The Computer Virus Crisis. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 1992.

http://www.answers.com/topic/computer-virus

2- See F. B. Cohen, A Short Course on Computer Viruses (2d ed. 1994); G. Smith, The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground (1994); W. T. Polk et al., Anti-Virus Tools and Techniques for Computer Systems (1995); M. A. Ludwig. The Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses (2d ed. 1998); P. E. Fites, P. Johnston, and M. P. J. Kratz, The Computer Virus Crisis (1999).

http://www.answers.com/topic/computer-virus

3- Naming and Classifying Computer Viruses in 1996 by David B. Hull, Ph.D.

http://home.earthlink.net/~colobus/vclassif.htm

4- Open Problems in Computer Virus Research

Steve R. White

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

Yorktown Heights, NY

USA

Presented at Virus Bulletin Conference, Munich, Germany, October 1998

http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/White/Problems/Problems.html

5- A history of computer viruses ¿½ Introduction

Harold Joseph Highland FICS, FACM, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

Available online 10 June 1998.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V8G-3SX269W-2P&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1130622556&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=21efd2423b0eb4ebd32af5040db0252e

10.0 Methodology

10.1 The questionnaire:

The questionnaire for this survey was making to find out about virus and antivirus . Usually it is distributed among the large number of people to know to find out the result and their attitude on the virus and antivirus .

There were 13 questions were printed and distributed for people to know what they think about virus and antivirus .

10.2 Finding:

This questionnaire contains a series of questions about the virus and antivirus .I asked public of people and taking their views on this subject. So, I found the following results:

1- Do you have any idea about Computer Virus?

All the public of people knew very well what is the computer virus? Around 100% have the idea about computer virus.

2- Is your PC infected by virus ?

Most of the people their computers infected by the virus .

3- Do you make backup copies of your files ?

The majority of the people are doing backup copies between monthly and other days .Furthermore, there is less of people doing backup copies through daily or never doing .

4- Which is antivirus do you use ?

Around 33.37% of the people are using McAfee antivirus and the same percentage using another antivirus .In addition,26.65 % their using Kaspersk Internet Security and 6.61% using ESET NOD32 .

5- Do you buy the original anti-virus?

Around 80% of the people are buying the original copy of antivirus and unfortunately , percentage of the remaining people are buying non-licensed versions.

6- How often do you update your anti-virus ?

There are high percentages in terms of update antivirus between daily and weekly. On other hands , around 20% of people are updated antivirus .

7- Do you perform virus scan for the CD or Flash disc before you use it?

Most people perform virus scan for the CD or Flash disc before use it in computers and About 13% of people ignore virus scan for the CD or Flash disc .

8- Do you use the Internet service daily ?

There is a large percentage of people use the Internet service on a daily and depend on it.

9- Are you protecting your files by using a password ?

54% protecting files by using a password and less percentage not protecting files .

10- Do you get any virus while you read any Email?

53% of people infected through the virus while read Email .

11- Would you like to create viruses?

Most people do not tend to create viruses and less than 27% of people tend to create viruses .

12- Do you think that antivirus companies create computer viruses?

It was found that 73% of the people think antivirus companies are created computer viruses because get to a lot of money through buy antivirus and using it to protect their files from a virus .

13- Would you like to use more than one anti-virus in your PC?

It was found that 93% of the people do not want to use more than one antivirus in the same PC because make delay for performance PC and reduce of speed .

11.0 Conclusions

This report discussed about Virus an Antivirus . I gathered information through Internet ,some books and my colleagues. According to the survey, I Found that the viruses grow and spread very quickly, but people’s awareness and knowledge of the risk of viruses make them eager to stop the spread of viruses through using antivirus software and making backup copies of the files .Furthermore, Using security programs such as firewall or windows defiance are helping to protect your computer from viruses .

In addition, this report covered the types of viruses and dangerous on the PC. Every day more and more viruses, but in the end is getting rid of them.

12.0 Recommendations

I recommend all to use antivirus software and make updating on the daily through an internet. Moreover, do not open any Email does not know the sender and perform virus scan for CD or Flash memory before use it in your computer. And also to be safe, use the original copy of your software.

13.0 Bibliography