Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses

Many of the original MS-DOS-based viruses and other types of malware were
written as experiments intended to be either harmless or destructive,and many were
created as simple and harmless pranks.As time went on,the level of skill used to
create such malware grew by leaps and bounds,and the severity of each payload
grew exponentially as well.This inevitably caused many software programmers to
stop coding,learn security fundamentals,and start coding again while applying those
fundamentals.Because it appeared that the exploit writers were outpacing the soft-
ware developers,this practice became ìmandatoryîwithin Microsoftís own camp.
Young,inexperienced software programmers and script kiddies learning about
viruses and the techniques used to write them were getting more advanced as the
tools they created or had at their disposal expanded in number.Some of these
malware attacks proved to hurt a global economy that now thrived on the use of
the Internet.As time went on,a chase seemed to ensue,and it appeared as though
the exploit writers were outpacing the productís legitimate software development
teams.As the use of the Internet exploded,it seemed as though malware grew
more and more destructive on a daily basis.Newer exploits were coming out
rapidly that were designed to destroy files on a hard disk or to corrupt the file
system so that it could not be used.Viruses were created to cause traffic flooding
to legitimate Web servers,putting them out of business.The list goes on and on.It
wasnít until malware became extremely destructive that action was taken on a
grand scale.In 1999,Melissa (a well-known computer virus) really showed us how
fast (and far) a virus could spread.It also showed us how vulnerable our systems
were to attacks that could hurt a companyís bottom line.Melissa was the first virus

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