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The 1980’s saw an onslaught of malicious viruses as a response to increased home computers. As a teen, Richard Skrenta wrote the Elk Cloner that targeted Apple computers in 1981. It was the first wide-scale virus transmitted by disk that worked from the boot sector. Infected Apple computers would then transmit this virus on to a clean disk. Elk Cloner wipes the screen and would display a simple poem.
In 1983 Frederick Cohen (left) began using the term virus to describe programs like Rabbit and Creeper. These programs worked very much like a real life virus. In 1986, the first IBM PC virus was Brain Boot that originated out of Pakistan. In 1987 six more viruses populated: Cascade, Jerusalem, SCA, Vienna, Lehigh, and Christmas Tree. These viruses were boot sector viruses aimed at crippling the executable files on the hard drive.
In the 1990’s the viruses became more complicated, moving from the boot sector. The first polymorphic virus named 1260 is created by Mark Washburn. This virus used encryption code and the Vienna as a source.
The media painted the Michelangelo virus as being the digital end of times in 1992. This virus was supposed to wipe out over a million hard drives. In reality, the damage from Michelangelo was over-estimated. By the end of 1990’s, over 14 various viruses arose in the digital world. The commercial development of antiviral programs started. The increased popularity of the internet helped spread viral infection rates. Over 30 plus viruses were generated from 2000 to 2005. Luckily these viruses targeted the Windows OS. However let’s review some of the Linux viruses.
The first Linux virus arose in 1996, and was Stoag. It exploited holes in the kernel and infected executable binary files. Bliss rose a year later, it was written to prove that Linux is not virus-proof, and it also affected executable binary files. At the end of 1999, Vit developed as a cross platform OS infector. It also affected executable binary files.
At the start of the new century, a number of harmless non-memory resident parasitic viruses developed: Winter.341, Zip Worm, Satyr, Rike, and Ramen. By the mid 2000’s, three aggressive Linux viruses were produced: Badbunny, Kaiten, and Koobface. Badbunny would infect via an openoffice document file format, and display a lewd picture. Kaiten allowed for backdoor access to a Linux platform. Koobface is spread by social networks aimed at gathering login information.
Many experts agree that Linux is not impervious to viruses. However the requirement for root access on many distros diminishes the ability of viral infection on the hard drive. The biggest threat to Linux users is social engineering.