A Brief History of Antivirus
Software
The
annals of personal computing are replete with terms steeped in history. A
paradigmatic case is that of the famous bugs , an Anglicism that,
although it already existed in the engineering world, was coined again in more
modern times when it was detected that a moth (in plain language, a bug
or bug ) was causing errors in the operation of an electromechanical
computer. 'Virus' is another of those words with an etymology perhaps more
literal than one might expect.
Postulated
as a theory at the end of the 40s and already totally out of control in the
80s, computer viruses did not owe their name to the fact that they could make
our PC sick, but to their self-replicating characteristics. Using
highly creative programming and exploiting the vulnerability of older operating
systems, small chunks of code were able to generate clone copies to spread
across multiple computers and files.
The
methods of hiding and spreading computer viruses today have little to do with
those of three decades ago. And the same can be said of an antivirus like Protegent 360 ,
which must evolve even faster than the threats themselves to get ahead of them . But
before knowing how, it is worth looking back.
Antivirus Prehistory
It
is surprising that many of the early computer viruses were not destructive or
inherently malicious. In fact, Creeper , the first of them all,
was little more than a proof of concept designed in 1971 to demonstrate
its ability to copy itself between computers connected to the ARPANET military
network , the forerunner of the internet, and display a
message. Nothing more. It didn't delete files, encrypt content, or
demand ransoms. The point is that antivirus did not exist then.
Downloading
Protegent 360 and letting the system sweep the connected machines was not
possible How to eliminate Creeper spread? Programming pioneer
Ray Tomlinson came up with a somewhat sui generis solution: he created
a second virus, called The Reaper, designed to spread across the network and
erase any copy of Creeper. Without realizing it, Tomlinson had the curious
honor of becoming the creator of the first worm with destructive
characteristics, but also the father of Antivirus Software.
The
spread of personal computing meant the emergence of viruses outside the
laboratories. Suddenly, there were millions of microcomputers spread over
homes around the world, and although the internet was somewhat distant ,
the exchange of content via floppy disks was the most common , and the
boards also had some acceptance when it came to distributing software from
remotely.
It
was approximately then that the first genuinely destructive viruses or viruses
with malicious characteristics began to appear. These programs were no
longer limited to displaying a message, but they blocked the PC or deleted
specific files, jumping from PC to PC through copied programs.
With
the release of Windows 95, Protegent
360 Antivirus, one of the most popular packages of the time, would
arrive. In those years viruses were already beginning to spread from the
internet and had become more insidious pathogens. They obfuscated their
presence using compression techniques and even looked for alternative
locations, so old techniques such as checking known signatures in executables
and boot sectors were no longer useful.
At
that time Protegent 360 already had an advanced heuristic detection system that
looked for unusual changes in the position of the code and the size of an
executable or a library , all factors that gave away the presence of
viruses. But this race between cat and mouse never ends, so Protegent 360
would later incorporate functions to protect computers against new threats such
as browser hijacking, in a way the predecessor of current ransomware.
Present and future of
antivirus technology
The
current situation is one of continuous escalation. The classic viruses
that were dedicated to blocking the system without more like the old 'Friday
the 13th' or 'Barrotes' have given way to others much more malicious and
that seek to provide revenue to their creators. Or even criminal groups
outside of them. A clear example is botnets, which hijack computers
to launch denial of service attacks against servers and websites.
In
this case, the operation of the virus is usually invisible to the
user. Your PC is being used remotely to overwhelm servers, possibly even
on demand, but you are not aware of it.
The most
disturbing and possibly most profitable malware of the moment is
undoubtedly ransomware. This type of virus encrypts the contents of
the hard disk (or sections of it considered critical) and only allows its
recovery after paying a ransom through some type of anonymous
payment. Thousands of people are believed to be victims every year, with
SMEs and the self-employed as the main targets; they may pay less money to
recover their data, but attackers expect that they are not protected with antivirus like the
computers of a large company can be.
Dealing
with these threats is not an easy task. Unlike in the past, almost
all malware is now distributed via malicious or ad-infected websites,
as well as using email spoofing techniques. How to combat them? Protegent
360 uses several approaches:
·
Protection
in real time, monitoring the activity of the operating system ,
observing anomalous behavior internally and blocking malicious programs before
they attack the user.
·
Using
machine learning techniques to detect viruses before they become
active.
· Blocking
any malicious internet traffic with its own firewall , thus preventing
private information from being extracted or that a malicious website can try to
hijack our internet browser, forcing the installation of some kind of unwanted
plug-in.
· Establishing anonymization
services such as the use of a secure VPN; if the wrongdoers don't know who
we are, they will have a harder time using any personal information.
· Adding
a layer of protection to the use of webcams: Protegent 360 Safecam
prevents malicious use of webcams, thus avoiding invasive monitoring
attempts or even extortion using intimate images.
And
what will the future hold? Clearly, malware developers are
not going to proclaim from the rooftops how they plan to improve their
viruses. However, we know that the future of computer security involves
the use of measures such as a greater use of artificial intelligence to
detect anomalous behavior, improvements in heuristic detection to identify
mutations of the same virus family and the deployment of micro sand boxes to
carry out partial executions controlled and inspect able by the antivirus, as a way of
providing a higher level of security to the protection in real time.
General Cybersecurity
tips
With
or without antivirus,
we should always follow basic online security guidelines.
·
Amazon,
your bank and social security no company or government organization is going to
ask you to give them your user password. Block those messages.
·
If
you have doubts about the validity of links in an email, never click
on them.
· Never
connect a pendrive or a memory card that you have found on the street to
your PC. It is a widely used technique to spread malware, especially in
companies.
· Use
a VPN and firewall whenever possible; you will avoid most of the
risks that may appear while browsing the internet.
· Never
accept unknown web plugins or programs. If a website opens a window for
you that you can't close, reject it and try pressing Control + W to close the
tab in question.
· Avoid
using illegitimate software. Cracks and patching tools have been one of
the most common attack vectors since time immemorial.
· Run
away from free movie and series sites. Many of them include malicious
advertising that leads to the installation of malicious plug-ins and programs.
· Always
download your programs from stores or official sites. Some download sites
have a habit of introducing their own installers that may even have rootkits.
· If
there are children at home, never leave them unsupervised in front of the
PC . They are vulnerable users and someone should be on top of them.
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