McAfee AVDCDE-AA-AA User Guide - Page 8

Preface The threat from viruses and other malicious software is real, and it is growing worse. Some estimates have placed the total worldwide cost in time and lost productivity for merely detecting and cleaning virus infections at more than $10 billion per year, a figure that doesn't include the costs of data loss and recovery in the wake of attacks that destroyed data. Where do viruses come from? As you or one of your colleagues recovers from a virus attack or hears about new forms of malicious software appearing in commonly used programs, you've probably asked yourself a number of questions about how we as computer users got to this point. Where do viruses and other malicious programs come from? Who writes them? Why do those who write them seek to interrupt workflows, destroy data, or cost people the time and money necessary to eradicate them? What can stop them? Why did this happen to me? It probably doesn't console you much to hear that the programmer who wrote the virus that erased your hard disk's file allocation table didn't target you or your computer specifically. Nor will it cheer you up to learn that the virus problem will probably always be with us. But knowing a bit about the history of computer viruses and how they work can help you better protect yourself against them. Virus prehistory Historians have identified a number of programs that incorporated features now associated with virus software. Canadian researcher and educator Robert M. Slade traces virus lineage back to special-purpose utilities used to reclaim unused file space and perform other useful tasks in the earliest networked computers. Slade reports that computer scientists at a Xerox Corporation research facility called programs like these "worms," a term coined after the scientists noticed "holes" in printouts from computer memory maps that looked as though worms had eaten them. The term survives to this day to describe programs that make copies of themselves, but without necessarily using host software in the process. A strong academic tradition of computer prank playing most likely contributed to the shift away from utility programs and toward more malicious uses of the programming techniques found in worm software. Computer science students, often to test their programming abilities, would construct rogue worm programs and unleash them to "fight" against each other, competing to see whose program could "survive" while shutting down rivals. Those same students also found uses for worm programs in practical jokes they played on unsuspecting colleagues. viii McAfee VirusScan Anti-Virus Software