Reports are emerging that the first worm written for Apple's iPhone has been unleashed and is infecting phones in Australia. However, the worm, known as Ikee, is only a threat to users who have jaibroken their phones to let them run unauthorized software, security experts say.
In fact, Ikee doesn't do anything particularly bad -- it changes the victim's wallpaper to a photograph of 80s singer Rick Astley and then seeks out other phones to infect -- but it could be modified to do something more dangerous such as stealing sensitive information from the iPhone.
The worm does not affect most iPhone users; only those with jailbroken iPhones that are running a Unix utility called SSH (Secure Shell) with the iPhone's default password, "alpine," still in use. SSH lets someone connect to the iPhone remotely over the Internet, so installing this software with the default password in place is akin to adding an unlocked back-door to the device. It doesn't affect users who use the phone in conjunction with Network Address Translation (NAT), a popular networking technology that lets many users share the same IP address.
The worm writer is Mr. Ashley Towns, a 21 year-old unemployed programmer from Wollogong, Australia. He said Sunday in an instant-message interview. "It was supposed to be a small prank I definitely wasn't expecting it to get as far as it did," he said. Once the worm adds the Rick Astley wallpaper, it disables the iPhone's SSH daemon and then looks around on the Internet for other vulnerable iPhones to infect. Tricking victims into playing a video or looking at a picture of Rick Astley -- best known for his hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" -- is a popular Internet prank called Rickrolling.
It's not clear how many people have been affected by the worm, but the Worm creator said that his phone alone infected about 100 other devices though there has been no confirmed reports of the worm spreading outside of Australia. News of the worm first started spreading several days ago, when users on an Australian technology discussion board complained that their iPhone wallpaper had been changed without authorization.
iPhone users may be pissed, but Apple may not mind. The iPhone's creator has been trying to put an end to jailbreaking for years due to its security and performance problems.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
ADWARES: OVER VIEW
Adware as the name implies, is a program that is usually free, otherwise known as Freeware, that have advertisements built into the software. That means when you run the software, it will pull down advertisements from the Internet and display them somewhere in the software. Most of these types of software allow you to register the software, by paying some fee, in order to remove the ads. It is an advertising-supported software which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used. Some types of adware are also spyware and can be classified as privacy-invasive software.
Advertising functions are integrated into or bundled with the software, which is often designed to note what Internet sites the user visits and to present advertising pertinent to the types of goods or services featured there. Adware is usually seen by the developer as a way to recover development costs, and in some cases it may allow the software to be provided to the user free of charge or at a reduced price. The income derived from presenting advertisements to the user may allow or motivate the developer to continue to develop, maintain and upgrade the software product. Conversely, the advertisements may be seen by the user as interruptions or annoyances, or as distractions from the task at hand.
It displays advertisements while the application is running. Advertisements appear in a web browser, pop-up windows, special toolbars or within the host program. Adware also can gather information about user’s habits and interests and send it out through a background Internet connection. Such behavior allows adware vendors to deliver targeted advertisements to the end user and collect general statistics.
Adware is divided into parasitical and legitimate applications. Illegal advertising programs are very similar to spyware parasites and often have some of their functions. They can be installed without explicit user consent and work all the time a computer is on.
Adware parasites differ from regular viruses. They do not spread by themselves and usually must be installed as any other software with or without user content. Some adware vendors deceive the user by presenting a particular adware as a useful tool, for example, a powerful web search service or fast download manager. Users download and install such programs. However, practically all of them appear to be either completely useless or ineffective. It can also spread through Some illegal advertising applications that can get into the system using Internet Explorer ActiveX controls or exploiting certain web browser vulnerabilities.
EFFECTS OF ADWARE
- Tracks user’s web browsing habits, gathers information about user’s interests, records addresses of visited web sites, logs taken actions and sends some or all collected data to a remote server.
- Degrades overall system performance. Some adware parasites are badly programmed, they
waste too much computer resources and cause software instability.
- Updates itself via the Internet and often does not provide the complete uninstall feature.
- Continuously serves commercial advertisements and displays pop-ups.
- Installs advertising toolbars, additional adware programs or undesirable third-party software.
- Creates numerous links to advertising resources, places desktop shortcuts to marketing sites,
adds bookmarks to the web browser’s Favorites list.
However, despite the raging menace of adware, a very efficient web browser can help prevent it from infiltrating your system. This should also be assisted with regular monitoring of your web browsers' security settings.
Advertising functions are integrated into or bundled with the software, which is often designed to note what Internet sites the user visits and to present advertising pertinent to the types of goods or services featured there. Adware is usually seen by the developer as a way to recover development costs, and in some cases it may allow the software to be provided to the user free of charge or at a reduced price. The income derived from presenting advertisements to the user may allow or motivate the developer to continue to develop, maintain and upgrade the software product. Conversely, the advertisements may be seen by the user as interruptions or annoyances, or as distractions from the task at hand.
It displays advertisements while the application is running. Advertisements appear in a web browser, pop-up windows, special toolbars or within the host program. Adware also can gather information about user’s habits and interests and send it out through a background Internet connection. Such behavior allows adware vendors to deliver targeted advertisements to the end user and collect general statistics.
Adware is divided into parasitical and legitimate applications. Illegal advertising programs are very similar to spyware parasites and often have some of their functions. They can be installed without explicit user consent and work all the time a computer is on.
Adware parasites differ from regular viruses. They do not spread by themselves and usually must be installed as any other software with or without user content. Some adware vendors deceive the user by presenting a particular adware as a useful tool, for example, a powerful web search service or fast download manager. Users download and install such programs. However, practically all of them appear to be either completely useless or ineffective. It can also spread through Some illegal advertising applications that can get into the system using Internet Explorer ActiveX controls or exploiting certain web browser vulnerabilities.
EFFECTS OF ADWARE
- Tracks user’s web browsing habits, gathers information about user’s interests, records addresses of visited web sites, logs taken actions and sends some or all collected data to a remote server.
- Degrades overall system performance. Some adware parasites are badly programmed, they
waste too much computer resources and cause software instability.
- Updates itself via the Internet and often does not provide the complete uninstall feature.
- Continuously serves commercial advertisements and displays pop-ups.
- Installs advertising toolbars, additional adware programs or undesirable third-party software.
- Creates numerous links to advertising resources, places desktop shortcuts to marketing sites,
adds bookmarks to the web browser’s Favorites list.
However, despite the raging menace of adware, a very efficient web browser can help prevent it from infiltrating your system. This should also be assisted with regular monitoring of your web browsers' security settings.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
WORMS: WHAT ARE THEY?
A worm is a computer program that has the ability to copy itself from machine to machine. Worms use up computer time and network bandwidth when they replicate, and often carry payloads that do considerable damage. A worm called Code Red made huge headlines in 2001. Experts predicted that this worm could clog the Internet so effectively that things would completely grind to a halt. A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. For example, the Slammer worm (which caused mayhem in January 2003) exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL server. "Wired" magazine took a fascinating look inside Slammer's tiny (376 byte) program.
Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. The Code Red worm replicated itself more than 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001 [Source: Rhodes]. The Code Red worm slowed down Internet traffic when it began to replicate itself, but not nearly as badly as predicted. Each copy of the worm scanned the Internet for Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers that did not have the Microsoft security patch installed. Each time it found an unsecured server, the worm copied itself to that server. The new copy then scanned for other servers to infect. Depending on the number of unsecured servers, a worm could conceivably create hundreds of thousands of copies.
According to a report by Symantec published in September 2007, the company received more than 212,000 reports of viruses, worms and other threats during the first half of 2007, a 185% increase over the second half of 2006.
A worm called Storm, which showed up in 2007, immediately started making a name for itself. Storm uses social engineering techniques to trick users into loading the worm on their computers. So far, it's working -- experts believe between one million and 50 million computers have been infected [source: Schneier].
When the worm is launched, it opens a back door into the computer, adds the infected machine to a botnet and installs code that hides itself. The botnets are small peer-to-peer groups rather than a larger, more easily identified network. Experts think the people controlling Storm rent out their micro-botnets to deliver spam or adware, or for denial-of-service attacks on Web sites.
Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. The Code Red worm replicated itself more than 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001 [Source: Rhodes]. The Code Red worm slowed down Internet traffic when it began to replicate itself, but not nearly as badly as predicted. Each copy of the worm scanned the Internet for Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers that did not have the Microsoft security patch installed. Each time it found an unsecured server, the worm copied itself to that server. The new copy then scanned for other servers to infect. Depending on the number of unsecured servers, a worm could conceivably create hundreds of thousands of copies.
According to a report by Symantec published in September 2007, the company received more than 212,000 reports of viruses, worms and other threats during the first half of 2007, a 185% increase over the second half of 2006.
A worm called Storm, which showed up in 2007, immediately started making a name for itself. Storm uses social engineering techniques to trick users into loading the worm on their computers. So far, it's working -- experts believe between one million and 50 million computers have been infected [source: Schneier].
When the worm is launched, it opens a back door into the computer, adds the infected machine to a botnet and installs code that hides itself. The botnets are small peer-to-peer groups rather than a larger, more easily identified network. Experts think the people controlling Storm rent out their micro-botnets to deliver spam or adware, or for denial-of-service attacks on Web sites.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
THE SPREAD OF VIRUS THROUGH ELECTRONIC MAIL
This involves the spread of virus through email. This is one of the most popular methods used in spreading a Computer Virus. Virus authors adapted to the changing computing environment by creating the e-mail virus.
-The Melissa virus is a very good example of how dangerous a Computer Virus can be. It was released in March 1999. Melissa spread in Microsoft Word documents sent via e-mail. Someone created the virus as a Word document and uploaded it to an Internet newsgroup. Anyone who downloaded the document and opened it would trigger the virus. The virus would then send the document (and therefore itself) in an e-mail message to the first 50 people in the person's address book. The e-mail message contained a friendly note that included the person's name, so the recipient would open the document, thinking it was harmless. The virus would then create 50 new messages from the recipient's machine. At that rate, the Melissa virus quickly became the fastest-spreading virus anyone had seen at the time. As mentioned earlier, it forced a number of large companies to shut down their e-mail systems. The Melissa virus took advantage of the programming language built into Microsoft Word called VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. It is a complete programming language and it can be programmed to do things like modify files and send e-mail messages. It also has a useful but dangerous auto-execute feature.
-The ILOVEYOU virus, which appeared on May 4, 2000, was even simpler. It contained a piece of code as an attachment. People who double-clicked on the attachment launched the code. It then sent copies of itself to everyone in the victim's address book and started corrupting files on the victim's machine. This is as simple as a virus can get. It is really more of a Trojan horse distributed by e-mail than it is a virus. In the case of the ILOVEYOU virus, the whole thing was human-powered. If a person double-clicked on the program that came as an attachment, then the program ran and did its thing. What fueled this virus was the human willingness to double-click on the executable.
These two are very good examples of Virus infections through e-mail.
Friday, October 30, 2009
COMPUTER VIRUS: OVERVIEW
Computer viruses are called viruses because they share some of the traits of biological viruses. A computer virus passes from computer to computer like a biological virus passes from person to person. Unlike a cell, a virus has no way to reproduce by itself. Instead, a biological virus must inject its DNA into a cell. The viral DNA then uses the cell's existing machinery to reproduce itself. In some cases, the cell fills with new viral particles until it bursts, releasing the virus. In other cases, the new virus particles bud off the cell one at a time, and the cell remains alive.
A computer virus shares some of these traits. A computer virus must piggyback on top of some other program or document in order to launch. Once it is running, it can infect other programs or documents. Obviously, the analogy between computer and biological viruses stretches things a bit, but there are enough similarities that the name sticks.
People write computer viruses. A person has to write the code, test it to make sure it spreads properly and then release it. A person also designs the virus's attack phase, whether it's a silly message or the destruction of a hard disk. Why do they do it?
-Psychology that drives vandals and arsonists. Why would someone want to break a window on someone's car, paint signs on buildings or burn down a beautiful forest? For some people, that seems to be a thrill. If that sort of person knows computer programming, then he or she may funnel energy into the creation of destructive viruses.
-The thrill of watching things blow up is another reason. Some people have a fascination with things like explosions and car wrecks. Creating a virus is a little like that -- it creates a bomb inside a computer, and the more computers that get infected the more "fun" the explosion.
-Bragging rights, or the thrill of doing it is another reason. Sort of like Mount Everest -- the mountain is there, so someone is compelled to climb it.
Most virus creators seem to miss the point that they cause real damage to real people with their creations. Destroying everything on a person's hard disk is real damage. Forcing a large company to waste thousands of hours cleaning up after a virus is real damage. Even a silly message is real damage because someone has to waste time getting rid of it. For this reason, the legal system is getting much harsher in punishing the people who create viruses.
A computer virus shares some of these traits. A computer virus must piggyback on top of some other program or document in order to launch. Once it is running, it can infect other programs or documents. Obviously, the analogy between computer and biological viruses stretches things a bit, but there are enough similarities that the name sticks.
People write computer viruses. A person has to write the code, test it to make sure it spreads properly and then release it. A person also designs the virus's attack phase, whether it's a silly message or the destruction of a hard disk. Why do they do it?
-Psychology that drives vandals and arsonists. Why would someone want to break a window on someone's car, paint signs on buildings or burn down a beautiful forest? For some people, that seems to be a thrill. If that sort of person knows computer programming, then he or she may funnel energy into the creation of destructive viruses.
-The thrill of watching things blow up is another reason. Some people have a fascination with things like explosions and car wrecks. Creating a virus is a little like that -- it creates a bomb inside a computer, and the more computers that get infected the more "fun" the explosion.
-Bragging rights, or the thrill of doing it is another reason. Sort of like Mount Everest -- the mountain is there, so someone is compelled to climb it.
Most virus creators seem to miss the point that they cause real damage to real people with their creations. Destroying everything on a person's hard disk is real damage. Forcing a large company to waste thousands of hours cleaning up after a virus is real damage. Even a silly message is real damage because someone has to waste time getting rid of it. For this reason, the legal system is getting much harsher in punishing the people who create viruses.
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