A few years pass and we're now at the turn of the 21st century this period will be remembered as the
days of the plagues.
One such plague was code red or one that exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft web servers to deface
affected Web sites.
Notice how the main activity of the Morris worm and the worms we're now discussing spread themselves.
This was their basic payload.
They were released to breed and infect more and more machines.
Damaging actions if there were any code red launched them about every three weeks resulted in the defacement
of some web pages.
This was simply to manifest their presence.
This is a crucial moment.
This was the goal of the creators of these worms
other than code red.
This type of worm includes Linda Nimda is relevant to her analysis because it's a virus that distributed
cell through a number of propagation techniques by exploiting software errors but also by social engineering
which we'll discuss later.
What were the effects of the outbreak.
Two million infected computers in just three days.
While it would seem like an imposing feat it was quickly surpassed by close another mass mailing virus
which was released on the Internet and went around the world in two and a half hours.
The record held by cles was beaten by the Cuil slammer the slammer attacked vulnerabilities in the service
of Microsoft as CULE server a popular database system.
The worm was so effective partially because it targeted computers through UDP.
It took it about 10 minutes to infect 90 percent of vulnerable servers.
And this time the number of infected hosts doubled every eight and a half seconds.
Even though UDP is a lightweight protocol with very small header and offers only minimal transport service.
The outbreak has in fact resulted in Internet outage.
Banks had to shut down cash machine networks and airlines had to cancel flights global communication
was impeded or even blocked due to one virus that spread as fast as possible and the infrastructure
of the day.
If the infrastructure had been faster the results would have been even more staggering.
The past several years have been an era of cyber crime.
This is the key point of interest for us 2005 is a sort of threshold here or it's usually considered
as such.
Because it's the year in which the Zoetrope virus spread so top is lesser known than the worms were
discussed before as it was not widely reported in the press and mass media.
We know now that it was the first virus which was commissioned.
In other words it was written for money commissioning in order is not usually an exercise in charity.
If you pay money for something you expect your investment to pay off.
The virus was commissioned to steal data from a specific company by installing a Trojan horse.
Where did we start.
We started with a joke or with an outlet for Robert Morse's creativity and we ended up with Zoetrope
a virus that no one even pretended to masquerade as a harmless program that measures the Internet or
anything of the sort.
This was a worm created to make money.
This marks a very significant shift for us.
What are the consequences of this change.
The first is that media is more reluctant to report on computer systems security several years ago before
2005.
We the public were regularly fed with information on new global scale virus outbreaks recently there's
a lot less stories or news on computer security in the media.
Does that mean that we're generally more secure now or the people stopped trading viruses or perhaps
systems nowadays have been safeguarded so that viruses can't spread.
No unfortunately not quite the opposite.
Viruses nowadays aren't created for publicity coders who create viruses don't seek fame to try to earn
their bread writing viruses is now a job.
This means that in recent years from 2005 onward is the time when big money entered the world of computer
systems and change that forever.
This is by no means a revolutionary new era.