Malware Defense History

by Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov.

Copyright: Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov 1994-2013. Unpublished notes. Version 0.80.October, 2013

Contents : Foreword : Ch01 : Ch02 : Ch03  : Ch04 : Ch05 : Ch06 : Ch07 : Ch08 : Ch09 : Ch10 : Ch11 : Ch12 : Ch13

Skeptical Foreword

The preoccupation with computer "hacking"
is a way for physically unattractive males
to enter the mainstream of society.
Anonymous

There is general law that the more particular organism is adapted to particular environment, the more sensitive it is to even slightest changes of this environment. This law holds for malware and is exploration of its action in historical context is one of the reasons of writing this book. Change of environment is often deadly for malware. Like any highly specialized organism it is very sensitive to slightest changes in OS or in case they use TCP/IP network configuration.

Proliferation on Windows-based malware (like DOS viruses in the past) is to a certain extent a byproduct of Microsoft�s dominance in personal computers. MS-DOS, the first mass produced operating system for the first mass produced computer, is amazingly virus friendly. Essentially each new generation of computers leads to the creation and widespread adoption) of certain new types of programs. Here, Microsoft certainly made a significant contribution and it�s not accidental that among several new widespread programs that came to light, due to the PC revolution, were computer viruses.

Similarity the mass penetration of Windows created a new base for malware and such types of malware as spyware and extortionware parasite on a huge, multimillion mass of entry-level users with Windows-based computers.

At the same time Microsoft platform provides users with unique advantages and opportunities and malware problem are to certain externalities of popularity and power of the dominant platform. In reality the cost of AV protection is a part of the cost of the ownership of the Microsoft platform that should be viewed as such..

One interesting problem here is how to make Windows PC more resistant to malware without relying of signature updates from Microsoft or other anti-malware vendors. Not the Microsoft Security Essentials are bad: it is free and well tested malware scanner, but there should be other, better ways to protect PC. This problem of making DOS and later Windows immune to malware infections (or at least particular, prevalent now) infections is the main research interest of the author in this field. The author worked on it on and off since late 1988, so almost 25 years.

We can define several types of computer science research problems connected with "inreseing the immunity" of the Windows to malware.

• The analyses of  penetration mechanisms and propagation methods of malware (vulnerability points). In early days of malware (the world of DOS boot viruses and file viruses) DOS can be immunized to a particular file virus by running a small resident program which faked the mechanism by which the file virus checks its presence on the computer to avoid multiple infections of the same PC. 

• Simple changes in environent often block the ability of virfus to propogate. For example in case of DOS it was critical fo viruses to infect DOS utilities as there were the most frequntly used programs on the computer. They all have system attribute set and in order to infect the file it should first be cleared, file infected and the attribute reset again,  Simple enhancement of this system attribute via a resident program make any executable with this attribute immune to the viruses. Similarly just moving Web browser to other platform, for example Linux and accessing it via program like VNC makes Windows now much more resistant to a typical malware attack via rogue web sites that are conveniently provided to us by search engines like Google.
  

• The baseline based based analyses of infections. Detection of a malware in the OS environment as well as a virus in a computer program can generally be considered as a pattern recognition problem. It is much simplified if you have a full copy of previous state of the operating system partitions. In this case generic method of finding differences can be used for detecting what elements of OS changes as a result of infection and deciding whther this was a coinsidence of those new elements are parts of the mallware.
   
• Controlled experiment with infection on a virtual machine as the way to find entry point for malware. Another simple way to find the points in which malware attached itself to Windows is to simulate infection in controlled environment, for example on a virtual machine. Here noise created in OS due to user activities is not present and all changes can be attributed to infection.
   
• Methods of finding registry changes introduced by malware. Microsoft registry is a huge mess and a perfect environment for malwsare to cover. General pattern recognition methods (even simple regular expression recognition methods) can be fruitfully used for detection of virus files in registry. At the same time some viruses, called polymorphic viruses, try to defeat these methods by making the body of the virus unique for each infected file. Usually this is not enough to defeat pattern recognition completely, but it does make it more difficult and some preprocessing might be necessary before pattern recognition methods are applicable.
  

• Quick methods of parcial reverse engineering of malware source.  This is basically a branch of reverse engineering and includes the disassembly and reverse translation of the source code. In the old days viruses were really small, tiny programs. For example most sucessful file viruses were under 2K of size. And despite the fact that virus writers often used special methods to make disassembly more difficult it was relativly easy to get some understanding of how virus works at least to the point at which it is tested its own presence in the OS (to avoid double infection) which is enogh for creating of the vassine against this virus. Later virus authors became more sophisicated and   dynamically encrypted parts of the body of the virus with only a small sliding window decrypted at any given moment of virus execution. This made regula disassembler useless and the only way to see the actual code was debuggung program. The problem of disassembling programs is often considered to be a "gray area" that borders on piracy. But in fighting malware it has an undisputable justification and value. Moreover, in case of malware the notion of copyright is seriously twisted if not reversed at all.
  

• The epidemiology of computer virus infections. Computer viruses are usually an operating system version (or in case of application-based macro viruses a particular  application version) specific. That means that often the spread of the virus is limited to computers that have a particular version of operating system or a particular version of application installed. That also means that a virus life span is pretty tightly connected with a lifespan of a particular operating system and/or an application, or even patches to this OS or application.  And it's not surprising that a typical life span of a computer virus is only a couple of  years long. For example most of early macro viruses are unable to function on the latest versions of MS Office. Very few viruses survive for more than a decade and those which do survive are really very simple. for example many boot viruses due when a change to FAT32 changed the structure of the boot record. During the lifecycle the viruses progress through several phases: the first is the initial undetected dissimulation (phase one); then virus enters the mass discovery phase (phase two); after that -- so called mass  elimination phase (phase three, when most antivirus program detect and eliminate the virus) and at last the virus enters a chronic period (phase four). At this last stage of the lifecycle the virus is no longer widely distributed, but still might survive on some computers,  in archives and especially virus collections, but new instances of infection became very rare.  Sometimes the speed of disappearance of virus into computer virus collections is as impressive as its appearance.  It looks like boot viruses are the most long-lived and macro viruses are the most short-lived with file viruses somewhere in-between (although famous Vienna virus is still works OK on Windows 98 and NT DOS emulation box). The lifespan of  viruses also depends on complexity -- it's definitely longer for a very simple viruses and shorter for a complex viruses -- but again on average it is probably less than three years. The new version of OS usually means big problems for old viruses as virus writers often use undocumented features of OS or access systems block directly. The same is true for the application-based viruses.
  
• The anti-virus programs design issues. The are some promising and underutilized approaches beyond the most popular "find and shoot" method that is used in most commercial antivirus programs. Alternative methods proved to be useful in minimizing exposure to viruses or even eliminating a class of infections. for example signing of executables and macros is a very promising technique that was never widely deployed in Windows (authenticode). It's somewhat strange that despite existence of several more effective methods most popular antiviral programs are limited to so called virus scanners that try to detect the presence of a virus using simple (or not so simple) pattern matching.
  
• The tools and methods for analyzing viruses. Contrary to popular belief it is not that difficult for a programmer to analyze a virus using debugger in a controlled environment and check the validity of information supplied by anti-virus vendors.  After all,  getting one or more otherwise unused PC is not a problem in any sizable organization.

Of course the volume of information about malware and antiviral programs is well beyond the capabilities of any single person. So despite the fact that the author checked all the facts, one needs to access information provided critically. It can and probably does contain errors.

This is an introductory book, but not a "for dummies" book. This book presupposes some level of understanding of the malware problem, assembler language and operating system and applications used by malware. It is partially based on my Russian language book Computer Virology that was published in 1991, but I am too lazy to translate all this old material and this book is considerably shorter and more superficial that the old one.  Some new types of malware that were not existent in 1991 were added but it is amusing to see how the development of Windows malware repeats the path of DOS malware on a new technological level.  One interesting nuance is that there is some government interest in using malware as a cyber weapon, the development that started probably around 1996-1998.

Again those chapters are actually pretty raw unpublished notes and should be treated as such.

Still due to the lack of objective/skeptical information about anti-malware protection I feel that it make sense to put on the WEB my notes "as is".  I just hope that some provided information and, especially, the angle of attacking the problem might be useful.

Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov

Webliography

• Nikolai Bezroukov. An Overview of The Seventh International Virus Bulletin Conference (VB�97).  v.2.01; Oct. 21, 1997

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater�s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Last modified: March 12, 2019