History Of Computer Virus : 1949

V.I.R.U.S - 
V= Vital
I= Information and 
R= Research 
U= Under
S= Siege. 
History

Academic work

The first academic work on the theory of computer viruses (although the term "computer virus" was not invented at that time) was done by John von Neumann in 1949 who held lectures at the University of Illinois about the "Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata". The work of von Neumann was later published as the "Theory of self-reproducing automata".In his essay von Neumann postulated that a computer program could reproduce.
In 1972 Veith Risak published his article "Selbstreproduzierende Automaten mit minimaler Informationsübertragung" (Self-reproducing automata with minimal information exchange).The article describes a fully functional virus written in assembler language for a SIEMENS 4004/35 computer system.
In 1980 Jürgen Kraus wrote his diplom thesis "Selbstreproduktion bei Programmen" (Self-reproduction of programs) at the University of Dortmund.In his work Kraus postulated that computer programs can behave in a way similar to biological viruses.
In 1984 Fred Cohen from the University of Southern California wrote his paper "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments".it was the first paper to explicitly call a self-reproducing program a "virus"; a term introduced by his mentor Leonard Adleman.
An article that describes "useful virus functionalities" was published by J.B. Gunn under the title "Use of virus functions to provide a virtual APL interpreter under user control" in 1984.
Science Fiction

The Terminal Man, a science fiction novel by Michael Crichton (1972), told (as a sideline story) of a computer with telephone modem dialing capability, which had been programmed to randomly dial phone numbers until it hit a modem that is answered by another computer. It then attempted to program the answering computer with its own program, so that the second computer would also begin dialing random numbers, in search of yet another computer to program. The program is assumed to spread exponentially through susceptible computers.
The actual term 'virus' was first used in David Gerrold's 1972 novel, When HARLIE Was One. In that novel, a sentient computer named HARLIE writes viral software to retrieve damaging personal information from other computers to blackmail the man who wants to turn him off.
Virus programs

The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in the early 1970s.Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies in 1971.Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.
A program called "Elk Cloner" was the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" — that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread via floppy disk.This virus, created as a practical joke when Skrenta was still in high school, was injected in a game on a floppy disk. On its 50th use the Elk Cloner virus would be activated, infecting the computer and displaying a short poem beginning "Elk Cloner: The program with a personality."
The first PC virus in the wild was a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain created in 1986 by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written[15]. However, analysts have claimed that the Ashar virus, a variant of Brain, possibly predated it based on code within the virus.
Before computer networks became widespread, most viruses spread on removable media, particularly floppy disks. In the early days of the personal computer, many users regularly exchanged information and programs on floppies. Some viruses spread by infecting programs stored on these disks, while others installed themselves into the disk boot sector, ensuring that they would be run when the user booted the computer from the disk, usually inadvertently. PCs of the era would attempt to boot first from a floppy if one had been left in the drive. Until floppy disks fell out of use, this was the most successful infection strategy and boot sector viruses were the most common in the wild for many years.
Traditional computer viruses emerged in the 1980s, driven by the spread of personal computers and the resultant increase in BBS, modem use, and software sharing. Bulletin board-driven software sharing contributed directly to the spread of Trojan horse programs, and viruses were written to infect popularly traded software. Shareware and bootleg software were equally common vectors for viruses on BBS's.

Within the "pirate scene" of hobbyists trading illicit copies of retail software, traders in a hurry to obtain the latest applications were easy targets for viruses.
Macro viruses have become common since the mid-1990s. Most of these viruses are written in the scripting languages for Microsoft programs such as Word and Excel and spread throughout Microsoft Office by infecting documents and spreadsheets. Since Word and Excel were also available for Mac OS, most could also spread to Macintosh computers. Although most of these viruses did not have the ability to send infected e-mail, those viruses which did take advantage of the Microsoft Outlook COM interface.
Some old versions of Microsoft Word allow macros to replicate themselves with additional blank lines. If two macro viruses simultaneously infect a document, the combination of the two, if also self-replicating, can appear as a "mating" of the two and would likely be detected as a virus unique from the "parents".
A virus may also send a web address link as an instant message to all the contacts on an infected machine. If the recipient, thinking the link is from a friend (a trusted source) follows the link to the website, the virus hosted at the site may be able to infect this new computer and continue propagating.
Viruses that spread using cross-site scripting were first reported in 2002, and were academically demonstrated in 2005. There have been multiple instances of the cross-site scripting viruses in the wild, exploiting websites such as MySpace and Yahoo.

STOP VIRUS ENTERING INTO YOUR USB DRIVE

FRNDS If you have windows XP with SP2, then you can disable the writing option to USB drives.

WHAT IT WILL DO?
This trick is very useful if you have virus in your computer and want to copy files from a USB Drive but don’t want to transfer virus to the USB.

STEPS to disable the USB writing option:

To edit the computer registry, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button and type “Regedit” in Run option.(win key+R)

Here locate the location to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

Here in right side panel, click right to create a key with the name “StorageDevicePolicies”.

Now in left side panel, select “StorageDevicePolicies” key, again right click to create new DWORD value then label it “WriteProtect”. Set its value to “1″. But again to enable writing, set its values to “0″.
THATS IT

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect....

10 Worst Computer Virus Of All Time

Brain, 1986 It all started here: Brain was the first "real" virus ever discovered, back in 1986. Brain didn't really hurt your PC, but it launched the malware industry with a bang and gave bad ideas to over 100,000 virus creators for the next 2 decades.
Michelangelo, 1991 The worst MS-DOS virus ever, Michelangelo attacked the boot sector of your hard drive and any floppy drive inserted into the computer, which caused the virus to spread rapidly. After spreading quietly for months, the virus "activated" on March 6, and promptly started destroying data on tens of thousands of computers.
Melissa, 1999 Technically a worm, Melissa (named after a stripper) collapsed entire email systems by causing computers to send mountains of messages to each other. The author of the virus was eventually caught and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
ILOVEYOU, 2000 This was notable for being one of the first viruses to trick users into opening a file, which in this case claimed to be a love letter sent to the recipient. In reality, the file was a VBS script that sent mountains of junk mail and deleted thousands of files. The results were terribly devastating- one estimate holds that 10 percent of all computers were affected, to a cost of $5.5 billion. It remains perhaps the worst worm of all time.
Code Red, 2001 An early "blended threat" attack, Code Red targeted Web servers instead of user machines, defacing websites and later launching denial-of-service attacks on a host of IP addresses, including those of the White House.
Nimda, 2001 Built on Code Red's attack system of finding multiple avenues into machines (email, websites, network connections, and others), Nimda infected both Web servers and user machines. It found paths into computers so effectively that, 22 minutes after it was released, it became the Internet's most widespread virus at the time.
Klez, 2001 An email virus, Klez pioneered spoofing the "From" field in email messages it sent, making it impossible to tell if Bill Gates did or did not really send you that information about getting free money.
Slammer, 2003 Another fast spreader, this worm infected about 75,000 systems in just 10 minutes, slowing the Internet to a crawl (much like Code Red) and shutting down thousands of websites.
MyDoom, 2004 Notable as the fastest-spreading email virus of all time, MyDoom infected computers so they would, in turn, send even more junk mail. In a strange twist, MyDoom was also used to attack the website of SCO Group, a very unpopular company that was suing other companies over its code being used in Linux distributions.
Storm, 2007 The worst recent virus, Storm spread via email spam with a fake attachment and ultimately infected up to 10 million computers, causing them to join its zombie botnet.