The PC virus celebrates its 20th year of existence following the
detection back in January '86 of the boot sector virus, Brain,
which infected computers via floppy disk. While the virus Brain
itself was relatively harmless, it set in motion a long chain of
events leading up to today’s virus situation.
Boot sector viruses, now long extinct along with the floppy
disk, held a relatively long reign from 1986 to 1995. Since
transmission was via disk from computer to computer, infection
would only reach a significant level months or even years after its
release. This changed in 1995 with the development of macro
viruses, which exploited vulnerabilities in the early Windows
operating systems. For four years, macro viruses reigned over the
IT world and propagation times shrank to around a month from the
moment when the virus was found to when it was a global
problem.
As email became more widespread, so followed email worms and
individual worms which reached global epidemic levels in just one
day. Most notable in this connection was one of the very first
emails worms, Loveletter aka ILOVEYOU, which caused widespread
havoc and financial loss in 1999 before it was brought under
control.
In 2001, the transmission time window shrank from one day to one
hour with the introduction of network worms (such as Blaster and
Sasser), which automatically and indiscriminately infected every
online computer without adequate protection. Email and network
worms still today continue to cause havoc in the IT world.
At present there are over 150,000 viruses and the number
continues to grow rapidly. The biggest change over these 20 years
has not been in the types of viruses or amount of malware: rather
it has been in the motives of the virus writers.
“Certainly the most significant change has been the evolution of
virus writing hobbyists into criminally operated gangs bent on
financial gain,” says F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko
Hypponen. “And this trend is showing no signs of stopping.”
Hypponen continues: “There already are indications that malware
authors will target laptop WLANs as the next vector for automatic
spreading worms. Whatever the next step might be, it will be
interesting to see what kind of viruses we will be talking about in
another twenty years time – computer viruses infecting houses,
perhaps?”
About F-Secure Corporation
F-Secure Corporation protects consumers and businesses
against computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile
networks. We want to be the most reliable provider of security services in the
market. One way to demonstrate this is the speed of our response. According to
independent studies in 2004, 2005 and 2006 our response time to new threats is
significantly faster than our major competitors. Our award-winning solutions are
available for workstations, gateways, servers and mobile phones. They include
antivirus and desktop firewall with intrusion prevention, antispam and
antispyware solutions, as well as network control solutions for Internet Service
Providers. Founded in 1988, F-Secure has been listed on the Helsinki Exchanges
since 1999, and has been consistently growing faster than all its publicly
listed competitors. F-Secure headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland, and we have
regional offices around the world. F-Secure protection is also available as a
service through major ISPs, such as France Telecom, TeliaSonera, PCCW and
Charter Communications. F-Secure is the global market leader in mobile phone
protection provided through mobile operators, such as T-Mobile and Swisscom and
mobile handset manufacturers such as Nokia. The latest real-time virus threat
scenario news are available at the F-Secure Data Security Lab weblog at http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
For further information, please contact:
F-Secure Corporation
Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer
PL 24
FIN-00181 Helsinki
GSM +358 400 648 180
