Essay on Polymorphic

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Polymorphic &

Cloning Computer

Viruses

The generation of today is growing up in a fast-growing, high-tech world which allows us to do the impossibilities of yesterday. With the help of modern telecommunications and the rapid growth of the personal computer in the average household we are able to talk to and share information with people from all sides of the globe. However, this vast amount of information transport has opened the doors for the computer "virus" of the future to flourish. As time passes on, so-called "viruses" are becoming more and more adaptive and dangerous. No longer are viruses merely a rarity among computer users and no longer are they mere nuisances. Since many people depend on the data in their computer every day to make a living, the risk of catastrophe has increased tenfold. The people who create computer viruses are now becoming much more adept at making them harder to detect and eliminate. These so-called "polymorphic" viruses are able to clone themselves and change themselves as they need to avoid detection. This form of "smart viruses" allows the virus to have a form of artificial intelligence. To understand the way a computer virus works and spreads, first one must understand some basics about computers, specifically pertaining to the way it stores data. Because of the severity of the damage that these viruses may cause, it is important to understand how anti-virus programs go about detecting them and how the virus itself adapts to meet the ever changing conditions of a computer.

In much the same way as animals, computer viruses live in complex environments. In this case, the computer acts as a form of ecosystem in which the virus functions. In order for someone to adequately understand how and why the virus adapts itself, it must first be shown how the environment is constantly changing and how the virus can interact and deal with these changes. There are many forms of computers in the world; however, for simplicity’s sake, this paper will focus on the most common form of personal computers, the 80x86, better known as an IBM compatible machine. The computer itself is run by a special piece of electronics known as a microprocessor. This acts as the brains of the computer ecosystem and could be said to be at the top of the food chain. A computer’s primary function is to hold and manipulate data and that is where a virus comes into play. Data itself is stored in the computer via memory. There are two general categories for all memory: random access memory (RAM) and physical memory (hard and floppy diskettes). In either of those types of memory can a virus reside. RAM is by nature temporary; every time the computer is reset the RAM is erased. Physical memory, however, is fairly permanent. A piece of information, data, file, program, or virus placed here will still be around in the event that the computer is turned off.

Within this complex environment, exists computer viruses. There is no exact and concrete definition for a computer virus, but over time some commonly accepted facts have been related to them. All viruses are programs or pieces of programs that reside in some form of memory. They all were created by a person with the explicit intent of being a virus. For example, a bug (or error) in a program, while perhaps dangerous, is not considered a computer virus due to the fact that it was created on accident by the programmers of the software. Therefore, viruses are not created by accident. They can, however, be contracted and passed along by accident. In fact it may be weeks until a person even is aware that their computer has a virus. All viruses try to spread themselves in some way. Some viruses simply copy clones of themselves all over the hard drive. These are referred to as cloning viruses. They can be very destructive and spread fast and easily throughout the computer system.

To illustrate the way a standard cloning virus would adapt to its surroundings a theoretical example will be used. One day a teacher decides to use his/her classroom Macintosh’s Netscape to download some material on photosynthesis. Included in that material is a movie file which illustrates the process. However, the teacher is not aware that the movie file is infected with a computer virus. The virus is a section of binary code attached to the end of the movie file that will execute its programmed operations whenever the file is accessed. Then, the teacher plays the movie. As the movie is being played the virus makes a clone of itself in every file inside the system folder of that computer. The teacher shuts down the computer normally, but the next day when it is booted up all of the colors are changed to black and white. The explanation is that the virus has been programmed to copy itself into all of the files that the computer accesses in a day. Thus, when the computer reboots, the Macintosh operating system looks into the system folder at a file to see how many colors to use. The virus notices it access this file and immediately copies it self into it and changes the number of colors to two. Thus the virus has detected a change in the files that are opened in the computer and adapted itself by placing a clone of itself into the color configuration files.

Another prime way that viruses are spread throughout computers extremely rapidly is via LANs (Local Area Networks) such...

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