Viruses were few and far between and identifying them and removing them was an easy exercise. The times have however changed. Today's viruses number in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. Computer virus protection history has therefore gone into what looks an endless cycle of evolution that requires virus killers to kill the virus, while the virus evolves to find ways to bypass the virus killer. When viruses first started they were largely practical jokes put together by mischievous computer users and were generally spread through infected floppy disks, which was the main medium for exchange of information. Antivirus protection programs were designed to detect and kill just a few viruses.
The Evolution of Virus Protection
The advent of the internet and its exploding number of users turned into rapidly spreading viruses that infected millions of computers at the same time. Virus protection in turn developed into an industry with the burgeoning numbers of people looking for virus protection. These changes took place in the 1990's, and the virus protection industry has since become a multimillion dollar one. It was during this period that antivirus protection programs began to look into real time protection. They developed Terminate and Stay Resident or TSR programs monitored the systems constantly to check for the presence of the viruses that they had been programmed to deal with.
Today's viruses are developing into tools that fish for your personal information or even your money. Cybercrime has become a white collar crime that attracts a lot of people with computer knowledge and lax scruples, who find the internet an easy way of making money through the spread of viruses that they write. The wide spread of E-mail has helped such unscrupulous persons. It is estimated that two hundred new viruses enter the cyber world every day and antivirus protection agencies are forced to make almost daily updates to their virus protection programs. They have even started to use heuristic analysis for evaluation. In this analysis the programming commands of a script are executed within a virtual machine while the original file itself is isolated. If viral activities like replication, file overwrites or attempts to disguise the file are detected, the file is deemed suspicious and the user alerted. Another method used is to analyze the source code within the program and compare it to known virus source codes. If a match is found the user is alerted.
The advent of macro viruses which targeted data instead of executable programs made life still more difficult for virus protection. This greatly increased the possibilities of infection as data was exchanged far more frequently than programs. This led to the development of content filtering at Internet gateways. The huge amount of spam or unwanted mail has made such content filtering almost mandatory.
Phishing attacks were the next weapon used by virus writers. These create clones of existing sites and gull unsuspecting users into parting with sensitive information, which was then used for cybercrime. Virus protection vendors have developed personal firewalls and intrusion protection systems to guard against these.
Thousands of viruses are roaming around your computer and in the online world. Since they can create havoc by stealing your personal information and data, a complete virus protection for your PC is must.
The Evolution of Virus Protection
The advent of the internet and its exploding number of users turned into rapidly spreading viruses that infected millions of computers at the same time. Virus protection in turn developed into an industry with the burgeoning numbers of people looking for virus protection. These changes took place in the 1990's, and the virus protection industry has since become a multimillion dollar one. It was during this period that antivirus protection programs began to look into real time protection. They developed Terminate and Stay Resident or TSR programs monitored the systems constantly to check for the presence of the viruses that they had been programmed to deal with.
Today's viruses are developing into tools that fish for your personal information or even your money. Cybercrime has become a white collar crime that attracts a lot of people with computer knowledge and lax scruples, who find the internet an easy way of making money through the spread of viruses that they write. The wide spread of E-mail has helped such unscrupulous persons. It is estimated that two hundred new viruses enter the cyber world every day and antivirus protection agencies are forced to make almost daily updates to their virus protection programs. They have even started to use heuristic analysis for evaluation. In this analysis the programming commands of a script are executed within a virtual machine while the original file itself is isolated. If viral activities like replication, file overwrites or attempts to disguise the file are detected, the file is deemed suspicious and the user alerted. Another method used is to analyze the source code within the program and compare it to known virus source codes. If a match is found the user is alerted.
The advent of macro viruses which targeted data instead of executable programs made life still more difficult for virus protection. This greatly increased the possibilities of infection as data was exchanged far more frequently than programs. This led to the development of content filtering at Internet gateways. The huge amount of spam or unwanted mail has made such content filtering almost mandatory.
Phishing attacks were the next weapon used by virus writers. These create clones of existing sites and gull unsuspecting users into parting with sensitive information, which was then used for cybercrime. Virus protection vendors have developed personal firewalls and intrusion protection systems to guard against these.
Thousands of viruses are roaming around your computer and in the online world. Since they can create havoc by stealing your personal information and data, a complete virus protection for your PC is must.