VIRUS AND OTHER MALICIOUS CODE

By themselves, programs are seldom security threats. The programs operate on data, taking action only when data and state changes trigger it. Much of the work done by a program is invisible to users, so they are not likely to be aware of any malicious activity. For instance, when was the last time you saw a bit? Do you know in what form a document file is stored? If you know a document resides somewhere on a disk, can you find it? Can you tell if a game program does anything in addition to its expected interaction with you? Which files are modified by a word processor when you create a document? Most users cannot answer these questions. However, since computer data are not usually seen directly by users, malicious people can make programs serve as vehicles to access and change data and other programs. Let us look at the possible effects of malicious code and then examine in detail several kinds of programs that can be used for interception or modification of data.
Why Worry About Malicious Code?

None of us likes the unexpected, especially in our programs. Malicious code behaves in unexpected ways, thanks to a malicious programmer's intention. We think of the malicious code as lurking inside our system: all or some of a program that we are running or even a nasty part of a separate program that   somehow attaches itself to another (good) program.
Malicious Code Can Do Much (Harm)
Malicious code can do anything any other program can, such as writing a message on a computer screen, stopping a running program, generating a sound, or erasing a stored file. Or malicious code can do nothing at all right now; it can be planted to lie dormant, undetected, until some event triggers the code to act. The trigger can be a time or date, an interval (for example, after 30 minutes), an event (for example, when a particular program is executed), a condition (for example, when communication occurs on a modem), a count (for example, the fifth time something happens), some combination of these, or a random situation. In fact, malicious code can do different things each time, or nothing most of the time with something dramatic on occasion. In general, malicious code can act with all the predictability of a two-year-old child: We know in general what two-year-olds do, we may even know what a specific two-year-old often does in certain situations, but two-year-olds have an amazing capacity to do the unexpected.
Malicious code runs under the user's authority. Thus, malicious code can touch everything the user can touch, and in the same ways. Users typically have complete control over their own program code and data files; they can read, write, modify, append, and even delete them. And well they should. But malicious code can do the same, without the user's permission or even knowledge.
Malicious Code Has Been Around a Long Time
The popular literature and press continue to highlight the effects of malicious code as if it were a relatively recent phenomenon. It is not. Cohen [COH84] is sometimes credited with the discovery of viruses, but in fact Cohen gave a name to a phenomenon known long before. For example, Thompson, in his 1984 Turing Award lecture, "Reflections on Trusting Trust" [THO84], described code that can be passed by a compiler. In that lecture, he refers to an earlier Air Force document, the Multics security evaluation [KAR74, KAR02]. In fact, references to virus behavior go back at least to 1970. Ware's 1970 study (publicly released in 1979 [WAR79]) and Anderson's planning study for the U.S. Air Force [AND72] (to which Schell also refers) still accurately describe threats, vulnerabilities, and program security flaws, especially intentional ones. What is new about malicious code is the number of distinct instances and copies that have appeared.
So malicious code is still around, and its effects are more pervasive. It is important for us to learn what it looks like and how it works, so that we can take steps to prevent it from doing damage or at least mediate its effects. How can malicious code take control of a system? How can it lodge in a system? How does malicious code spread? How can it be recognized? How can it be detected? How can it be stopped? How can it be prevented? We address these questions in the following sections.
Kinds of Malicious Code
Malicious code or a rogue program is the general name for unanticipated or undesired effects in programs or program parts, caused by an agent intent on damage. This definition eliminates unintentional errors, although they can also have a serious negative effect. This definition also excludes coincidence, in which two benign programs combine for a negative


effect. The agent is the writer of the program or the person who causes its distribution. By this definition, most faults found in software inspections, reviews, and testing do not qualify as malicious code, because we think of them as unintentional. However, keep in mind as you read this chapter that unintentional faults can in fact invoke the same responses as intentional malevolence; a benign cause can still lead to a disastrous effect.
You are likely to have been affected by a virus at one time or another, either because your computer was infected by one or because you could not access an infected system while its administrators were cleaning up the mess one made. In fact, your virus might actually have been a worm: The terminology of malicious code is sometimes used imprecisely. A virus is a program that can pass on malicious code to other nonmalicious programs by modifying them. The term "virus" was coined because the affected program acts like a biological virus: It infects other healthy subjects by attaching itself to the program and either destroying it or coexisting with it. Because viruses are insidious, we cannot assume that a clean program yesterday is still clean today. Moreover, a good program can be modified to include a copy of the virus program, so the infected good program itself begins to act as a virus, infecting other programs. The infection usually spreads at a geometric rate, eventually overtaking an entire computing system and spreading to all other connected systems.
A virus can be either transient or resident. A transient virus has a life that depends on the life of its host; the virus runs when its attached program executes and terminates when its attached program ends. (During its execution, the transient virus may have spread its infection to other programs.) Aresident virus locates itself in memory; then it can remain active or be activated as a stand-alone program, even after its attached program ends.

A Trojan horse is malicious code that, in addition to its primary effect, has a second, nonobvious malicious effect. As an example of a computer Trojan horse, A logic bomb is a class of malicious code that "detonates" or goes off when a specified condition occurs. A time bomb is a logic bomb whose trigger is a time or date.
A trapdoor or backdoor is a feature in a program by which someone can access the program other than by the obvious, direct call, perhaps with special privileges. For instance, an automated bank teller program might allow anyone entering the number 990099 on the keypad to process the log of everyone's transactions at that machine. In this example, the trapdoor could be intentional, for maintenance purposes, or it could be an illicit way for the implementer to wipe out any record of a crime.
A worm is a program that spreads copies of itself through a network. The primary difference between a worm and a virus is that a worm operates through networks, and a virus can spread through any medium (but usually uses copied program or data files). Additionally, the worm spreads copies of itself as a stand-alone program, whereas the virus spreads copies of itself as a program that attaches to or embeds in other programs.
White et al. also define a rabbit as a virus or worm that self-replicates without bound, with the intention of exhausting some computing resource. A rabbit might create copies of itself and store them on disk, in an effort to completely fill the disk, for example.
These definitions match current careful usage. The distinctions among these terms are small, and often the terms are confused, especially in the popular press. The term "virus" is often used to refer to any piece of malicious code. Furthermore, two or more forms of malicious code can be combined to produce a third kind of problem. For instance, a virus can be a time bomb if the viral code that is spreading will trigger an event after a period of time has passed.

References

  1. P. Pfleeger, Shari Lawrence Pfleeger Charles: Security in Computing, PHI
  2. Notes: Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT)

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