This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events.
John von Neumann's article on the "Theory of self-reproducing automata" is published in 1966. The article is based on lectures given by von Neumann at the University of Illinois about the "Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata" in 1949.
The first story written about a computer virus is The Scarred Man by Gregory Benford.
The Creeper system, an experimental self-replicating program, is written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies to test John von Neumann's theory. Creeper infected 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 later created to delete Creeper.
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a graduate student named Alan Davis (working for Prof. Donald Gillies) created a process on a PDP-11 that (a) checked to see if an identical copy of itself was currently running as an active process, and if not, created a copy of itself and started it running; (b) checked to see if any disk space (which all users shared) was available, and if so, created a file the size of that space; and (c) looped back to step (a). As a result, the process stole all available disk space. When users tried to save files, the operating system advised them that the disk was full and that they needed to delete some existing files. Of course, if they did delete a file, this process would immediately snatch up the available space. When users called in a system administrator (A. Ian Stocks) to fix the problem, he examined the active processes, discovered the offending process, and deleted it. Of course, before he left the room, the still existing process would create another copy of itself, and the problem wouldn't go away. The only way to make the computer work again was to reboot.
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This is an introductory course to computer security and privacy. Its goal is to provide students with means to reason about security and privacy problems, and provide them with tools to confront them.
Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name. However, with the proliferation of other malware, antivirus software started to protect against other computer threats. Some products also include protection from malicious URLs, spam, and phishing.
Blaster (also known as Lovsan, Lovesan, or MSBlast) was a computer worm that spread on computers running operating systems Windows XP and Windows 2000 during August 2003. The worm was first noticed and started spreading on August 11, 2003. The rate that it spread increased until the number of infections peaked on August 13, 2003. Once a network (such as a company or university) was infected, it spread more quickly within the network because firewalls typically did not prevent internal machines from using a certain port.
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its connection. The owner can control the botnet using command and control (C&C) software. The word "botnet" is a portmanteau of the words "robot" and "network". The term is usually used with a negative or malicious connotation.
Active Debris Removal missions consist of sending a satellite in space and removing one or more debris from their current orbit. A key challenge is to obtain information about the uncooperative target. By gathering the velocity, position, and rotation of t ...
EPFL2022
The upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) is foreseen to encompass massive numbers of connected devices, smart objects, and cyber-physical systems. Due to the large scale and massive deployment of devices, it is deemed infeasible to safeguard 100% of the devic ...
Albeit very appealing, FPGA multitenancy in the cloud computing environment is currently on hold due to a number of recently discovered vulnerabilities to side-channel attacks and covert communication. In this work, we successfully demonstrate a new attack ...