They may bear seductive names, like Shakira, Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez, but with the capacity to spread to thousands of computers within minutes and cause billions of dollars in damage to North American businesses, viruses are being recognized as acts of criminals and not just pet projects of lonely computer geeks.
Fred Cohen spread the first computer virus 20 years ago. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California, Cohen designed a program that could "infect other programs by modifying them to include a … version of itself."
Today, viruses spread through shared documents and e-mails, and exploit flaws in software. Writers of a recent virus, Mimail, targeted Web sites that filter for viruses and unsolicited e-mails, or "spam," while gathering e-mail addresses.
In an attempt to find and punish virus authors, Microsoft has created a $5 million antivirus reward program. The bounty includes $250,000 for evidence leading to the capture and conviction of the original author of the MSBlast.A worm or SoBig virus.
In August, Jeffrey Parson, known online as "teekid," was charged in federal court in Seattle for spreading a variant of the Blaster worm. The 18-year-old senior from Hopkins High School could get up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for infecting 7,000 computers and causing millions of dollars in damage to Microsoft alone.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar