The History of Hacking and Viruses
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Imagine this scenario: you’ve just sat down at your computer. You boot it up, and as it
finally loads up, you realize that a lot of your files are missing. Then, your computer crashes.
You try and try again to restart it but nothing seems to be working. You bring your desktop in to
a computer repair shop and learn that you’ve been the victim of a malicious attack. In this day
and age, this exact situation isn’t all too uncommon. Like a normal virus, a computer virus can
spread from computer to computer in the blink of an eye, preying on all of the files hidden or
visible in the hard drive. As a PC user, I became more and more intrigued as to computer
viruses and the hackers (or as the computer community calls them, “crackers”) that create them.
In this report, I hope to explore the history of computer viruses, how and why they are made, as
well as research hackers and what their malicious attacks have done.
How does a computer virus work
So just how exactly does a computer virus work? Well, just like there are many
different strands of viruses that can attack a human body, there are different kinds of computer viruses that can attack and potentially harm your computer. The four most common computer
infections are viruses, e-mail viruses, Trojans, and worms. A virus is a small piece of code that
is attached to a program, such as a popular game or word processor. When a user runs the
program, the virus then loads itself onto the memory and searches for another program that it can
attach itself to. Once it does, it modifies the code to add the virus’s code in, and then starts the
original program. Every time the user runs any infected program, a new program is infected.
Then if that program is sent to another user, their computer will become infected. This is how a
virus will spread from one user to another.
While spreading a virus will inevitably cause damage, the part of the virus that actually
harms a computer is its attack phase. Usually some kind of trigger will start the attack phase,
and then the virus will execute its attack. This attack could be anything from a message on the
screen to a destroyed hard drive.
History of Hacking
According to the Washington Post, in 1979 engineers at Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center discover the computer "worm," a short program that scours a network for idle processors.
This worm just so happens to be the descendant of the modern day worm. As I read more of the
article, I read about the “414s”, a group of computer hackers who hacked their way into many
computer systems, including (according to the Detroit Free Press) the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. One of the young men,
17-year-old Neal Patrick, said that the only reason he did it was the challenge of getting into places he knew he shouldn’t be, and staying in there unseen. Unfortunately for him and his
group, they were discovered by the FBI in 1983. Although many saw the 414s as harmless, they
did cause $1,500 worth of damage at Sloan-Kettering by deleting files. All of this had happened
prior to any known viruses were spread. It wasn’t until 1986 that the first “computer virus” was
ever created. Invented in Pakistan by Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, the virus would slow down
the floppy disk drive. The virus was originally created to protect the brothers’ medical software,
but it had spread all over the world.
In 1988, a programmer named Robert Morris created a worm that disabled roughly
6,000 computers on the ARPANET network by flooding their memory banks with copies of the
worm. After confessing to creating to the worm, he was charged under the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act, and was sentenced to 3 years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a
$10,000 fine. This man was the originator of the computer worm, and it all happened only 20
years ago. After reading all of these interesting articles on the origin of the computer worm, I
decided to look into other viruses and the damage that was caused by them.
Computer Viruses
After researching computer viruses from the first one in 1988 till the present, I’ve come
to notice that the bigger-named viruses didn’t really happen until the late 1990’s. In 1999, the
“Melissa” virus spread causing roughly $80,000 worth of damage. The virus would send copies
of itself to the first 50 names listed in the victim’s Outlook e-mail address book. It also infects
Microsoft Word documents on the user's hard drive, and mails them out through Outlook to the same 50 addresses. Other known viruses include the “I Love You” virus in 2000, the “Anna
Kournikova” virus and “Code Red” worm in 2001, the “Klez” worm in 2002, and the “Slammer”
worm in 2003.
The “I Love You” virus took what made the Melissa virus spread and brought it to an
entirely new level. Upon opening the attachment (Love-Letter-For-You.txt.vbs), the computer
became infected, and the virus began its work. It would start by scanning the computer for any
passwords which were sent back to a website, which was obviously made by the creator of the
virus and since then has been shut down. Instead of just sending a copy of itself to the first 50
names listed in an e-mail address book, this virus would send a copy of itself to a person’s entire
address book. It also would overwrite files with the .vbs, .vbe, .js, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg,
.jpeg, .mp2, or .mp3 extension, which was very damaging for companies that worked heavily
with multimedia files. McAfee.com said that 60 to 80 percent of its Fortune 100 clients were
infected by the virus.
In 2001, a new virus was spread out to more than 225,000 computer systems globally,
shutting down many websites with the message “Hacked By Chinese”. The Code Red virus was
the perpetrator, but also had a hidden agenda. The virus planned to shut down a web address that
represents the White House website via a Denial of Service attack. However, the White House
switched to another address to avoid the attack.
Of all the viruses I’ve studied, the most interesting one has to be the Klez virus. The
reason I find it most interesting is by the way it sends itself to other machines. It spreads itself
around just like the Melissa virus or the ILOVEYOU virus, except it finds both a new sender and a new victim from the infected machine. For example, Computer A gets infected with the Klez
virus. It then finds two e-mail addresses (Computer B and Computer C) and sends out the virus.
Computer C receives the e-mail from Computer B, making it very hard to trace. On top of all
this, the virus will also destroy files within the infected machine. Later strands of the virus even
corrupted the system beyond repair, forcing users to reformat their entire system and reinstall
Windows.
The latest virus mentioned, the Slammer virus, was a shockwave that attacked
vulnerability within the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine, infecting roughly 22,000 victims
globally. Sites that monitor the traffic of the Internet (such as the Internet Storm Center)
reported global slowdowns. Yonhap news in South Korea reported that Internet services had
been shut down on Saturday January 25 2003.
Hackers- The “Black Hats”
But with all of these worms and viruses are the hackers that create them. Hacking has
been around since the 1950’s, when young MIT students first got their hands on a computer.
Hackers of this group included Peter Deutsch, Bill Gosper, Richard Greenblatt, Tom Knight, and
Jerry Sussman. In the 1970’s, John Draper figured out that by using the toy whistle found in
Captain Crunch cereal, he could make long distance phone call for free. This whistle generates a
2600-hertz signal, the same high-pitched tone that accesses AT&T's long-distance switching
system. Draper (aka: Cap’n Crunch) started creating “blue boxes”, and he and other “phreaks”
(or phone hackers) were able to commit wire fraud. One of the most noted phone phreaks was Ian Murphy, or as the hacking community
referred to him, “Captain Zap”. Murphy was the first hacker to be tried and convicted as a felon.
He broke into AT&T’s computers in 1981, and changed the internal clocks that measured the
rates of calls. For his crimes, he was sentenced to 1000 hours community service and 2 ½ years
of probation.
Hacking – 1970-1989
As the years passed and technology became more advanced, so did the hacking
community. Many of the phone phreaks of the 70’s had moved their skills into computer
hacking in the 80’s, and with that came electronic bulletin board system, or BBS. With these
BBS’s, hackers could trade tips, share information and stolen passwords, and talk about new and
improved hacking techniques. It is notable to point out that this is during the same time that
many hacking groups began to form, such as the previously mentioned 414 group, the Legion of
Doom, and the Chaos Computer Club. While the first two are groups found in the United States,
the CCC was a group that formed in Germany. These groups were the most influential hacking
groups of their time. While most of their ambitions were for exploration, some hackers wanted
nothing more than personal gain. They began hacking computers to steal passwords, credit card
information, and remote access to unauthorized computers. Because of the high amount of
criminal acts the US government decided to create the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986.
This act was made to help reduce the criminal computer acts being committed during that time.
In 1989, a group of hackers who were loosely affiliated with the CCC were arrested for selling United States operating system source code to the Soviet KGB. All were sentenced to probation
and fined, but nothing serious was done because the information that was stolen wasn’t
classified.
Hacking- 1990-Present
It was during the 90’s that some of the most heinous hacking took place. To some, this
decade produced the hacking “Hall of Fame”. That list of hackers included Kevin Poulsen,
Vladimir Levin, Robert Morris, Ian Murphy, Kevin Mitnick, and Mark Abene. Each of them are
brilliant with computers and each has their own story to put them in the Hall of Fame. Kevin
Poulsen, or “Dark Dante” as he was known online, is known as one of America’s best-known
cyber-criminal. In 1990, he took over all telephone lines going into Los Angeles area radio
station KIIS-FM, assuring that he would be the 102nd caller, and become the winner of a Porsche
944 S2. The FBI began to track Poulsen, and he was finally arrested in 1991. He pleaded to
seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, and
was sentenced to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $56,000 in restitution. Since his
release, he has become the senior editor for Wired News.
While Ian Murphy was breaking into phone lines and Robert Morris was making the
Morris worm, the other mentioned hackers were breaking into the spotlight. Vladimir Levin
made his claim to fame in 1994 when he accessed the accounts of several corporate customers of
Citibank. He then transferred funds to accounts set up by different accomplices in Finland, the
US, the Netherlands, Israel, and Germany. When his accomplices were arrested for trying to withdraw funds, all fingers pointed to Levin, and he was arrested March of 1995. It wasn’t until
1998 that he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, and a fine of over $200,000.
Since then, Citibank has begun using the Dynamic Encryption Card, a security system that no
other financial institution in the world has.
Of all the hackers of this era, one man made himself a worldwide computer celebrity.
Kevin Mitnick, or “Condor” online, was also nicknamed the “Lost Boy of Cyberspace” for his
repeated offenses in computer crimes. His first attempt at any kind of hacking was when he was
a young boy. He realized that by buying his own punch for his bus card, he could bypass the
punch card system used in the LA buses and get free rides to anywhere within the greater area.
However, it was his computer cracking that made him a fugitive of the law. He was wanted by
the FBI for stealing over 20,000 credit-card numbers, and was finally taken down in February of
1995. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and afterwards was not allowed to come in
contact with a computer or phone line. Since his release, he now works in computer security
consulting.
The last hacker on this list of fame is Mark Abene, or as he was known in cyberspace,
“Phiber Optik”. Abene and a group of brilliant hackers had formed a group known as the Legion
of Doom. After an argument with Chris Goggans (aka Erik Bloodaxe), he was removed from the
group, and he then started his own group, the Masters of Deception. The feud between these
groups ended up resulting in the Great Hacker War. The War started when an invite-only
bulletin board called “Fifth Amendment” was closed down. The closing had been blamed by MOD member John Lee (aka “Corrupt”), who was apparently distributing information that was
discussed on the board. After some prank phone calls and threats issued out by MOD, Goggans
and his team began a campaign to expose MOD. The War only lasted a few days, but during
that time it was clear that hacking was serious business.
How to prevent a user from a virus
Since then, hacking has only gotten worse. Programs such as Back Orifice, which allow
hackers unauthorized remote access into a computer running Windows 95 or 98, were being
created all around the world. It was just before the new millennium that security software
vendors began distributing anti-hacking software for home-computer use. While programs like
Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee antivirus software can put a damper on most viruses, they can
only do so much to help out a computer user. Computer users of today are not like the computer
users of the 80’s: back then, people knew how to use a computer inside and out, and knew how
to manipulate it to do whatever they wanted. Now, most homes have 2 or 3 computers, and
users only know how to send an email, or open a web browser, or play the latest video game. It
has become obvious that the common person needs to be more informed about hacking and
viruses.
So how do you prevent yourself from becoming infected? For starters, using a more
secure operating system such as UNIX can keep viruses and unwanted human visitors from
accessing your hard drive. If a user is more comfortable using Windows, anti-virus protection is a must. A user should avoid all kinds of programs from unknown sources, and that includes the
internet. A program posted up by a “credible source” can still contain a virus. The best way to
install software to your computer is to install it via CD drive, and to make sure it was bought
straight from the manufacturer. Finally, a user should never open an e-mail attachment that
contains an executable file. Any kind of “.exe” “.vbs” or “.com” file could potentially contain a
virus, and once you open it, you allow the virus to do whatever it wants on your machine.
The world of computers has vastly changed, and with it the world of hacking. What
started out as simply an exploration turned into greed and self-profit. However, there are still
those who take hacking as an exploration; a way of making technology better for the future.
Hackers such as Steve Wozniak (co-founder of the Apple computer) and Linus Torvalds
(initiated the development of the Linux kernel) are those hackers, known in the community as
“White Hats”. In the end, the computer is simply a machine. What you do with it, however; is
what makes this simple machine so powerful.
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