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Abstract
Before 1988, the word "virus" had a strictly biological meaning. In that
year, Robert Morris wrote and released the first "Internet worm", forcing
everyone in the computer community to immediately consider this new electronic
threat. While Morris created his virus to demonstrate a security flaw
in ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, today's virus writers often
have a more malicious intent. The Internet today spans the globe and serves
billions of users, providing an environment in which a single virus can
conceivably cause rapid and widespread damage to systems throughout the
world. Our project will look at this risk while exploring five primary
topics: an overview of the major types of viruses and how they function,
an analysis of how anti-virus software works, the role of CERT and private
anti-virus response teams in fighting the virus threat, the legal implications
of writing and spreading computer viruses, and the social impact of the
creation and propagation of computer viruses.
The most prevalent type of virus today is the e-mail worm, which often
exploits security flaws in major e-mail programs. While there are a number
of effective anti-virus software packages on the market to deal with this
problem, many casual computer users do not use them. Most anti-virus response
teams also take a reactive approach to combating viruses, dealing with
new threats as they appear. In the legal arena, while the United States
has laws punishing virus writers, the framework is less defined internationally.
This makes it difficult to prosecute international virus authors. As the
Internet expands its reach into more and more homes and viruses inevitably
spread more rapidly, computer users have an increasing responsibility
to be aware of these issues and their impact on the global computer community.
This project brought to you by Sha Sha Chu, Brendan Dixon,
Peter Lai, Darren Lewis, and Camila Valdes for Eric Roberts' CS201 class.
Website constructed by Sha Sha Chu, with the design shamelessly modeled
after www.theforce.net. |
