…
My first introduction to computer viruses came in the early 90's. I worked
for a small company in North West London who specialised in duplicating
floppy disks for software companies and packaging them
up with manuals, etc. into the shrink-wrapped boxes that sold in computer stores. Dr. Alan Solomon's company - then S&S International - was to be our latest customer with their 'Dr. Solomon's Anti Virus
Toolkit' product.
I attended some of Alan's early training courses as the subject of viruses
intrigued me. At the time the idea of viruses posing a real threat to businesses was dismissed as pure
fantasy; sure, they could be a bit of an irritant - but could they really cause lasting damage or destroy a company? Get real!
The viruses of that time were both primitive and sophisticated. Boot-sector
viruses like Brain and Form were the in-thing at the time. These viruses made effective use of the design flaws in the way that Dos, (the old Disk Operating System), interacted with the PC
Bios. If an infected floppy disk were left in the drive while the machine was booting up, the boot-sector, (or master boot record), of the hard drive would then become infected. Whenever that machine was
subsequently booted from the hard drive, the virus, (now resident in the boot-sector), would load into memory and infect every floppy disk that was accessed from that point on. Very clever - and also very
simple.
As more viruses began to appear, I felt that this was an area I had to get more involved in and so shortly after this I started working for S&S International.
As time went on,
viruses were developed which employed increasingly sophisticated methods of spreading and concealing the fact that they had infected in the first place. Polymorphism, (literally where the virus takes on
'many forms' to avoid detection), became common as did the various types of 'stealth' – where the virus tries to cover it's tracks.
Then came macro viruses – and with one almighty swoop, the face of
computer viruses changed overnight. Taking advantage of the increased and powerful macro functionality in Microsoft Word, it was now possible to write a computer virus in your word processor! This was, in
fact, nothing new. Alan Solomon and his peers at CARO, (the Computer Antivirus Research Organisation), had talked about this threat behind closed doors for years. So we were ready for this new type of threat
and were able to react swiftly.
Mass mailers such as 'I Love You' and 'Melissa' are the latest scourge – again making use of the increased functionality in email systems to spread and pick
out their intended targets effectively.
"So what does all this have to do with my handheld?" I hear you yell. Well,
everything, really. As the functionality in handheld applications
increases and as these machines become more and more popular, the 'critical mass' required for wide-spread virus infections to take place also approaches with alarming speed. Handheld machines also continue
to become more 'connected' with full featured Web browsers, email clients and also WAP support.
While all of this functionality will certainly contribute to the future spread of viruses on the handheld
platform, there is one that stands out as being a real 'enabling' technology – Bluetooth.
The conduit cometh…
You've probably heard lots about Bluetooth recently. It's a technology that
allows 'ad-hoc' wired and wireless connections to be made to other Bluetooth enabled devices that happen to be nearby. It will revolutionise the handheld arena making them much more effective as personal
organisers and digital assistants.
Unfortunately, it will also form the conduit through which future handheld viruses will spread. "But Bluetooth is secure!" I hear you cry once again. Yes - and
a pretty good job they've done with it, too. It'll certainly stop prying eyes from intercepting my credit card details as they're bounced between my handheld and my mobile phone, but who - or what -
initiated that little flurry of activity that saw my credit card details take a short jump along the digital highway? Do I have a virus in my pocket?
So if I have a virus in my Bluetooth enabled device and
sit on a train next to someone who also has a Bluetooth enabled device, it's possible that when he gets off at his stop, he'll have a virus in his pocket too. If this sounds a little far fetched to you, then
remember - most things virus-related sound far fetched - until they actually happen. I've seen it happen may times in the last decade or so that I've been involved with viruses to vouch for that.
Think for
a moment about the information that your handheld contains. Names, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. This is all information that virus writers relish the thought of obtaining and using. Add to this
the APIs that companies such as Microsoft have provided to allow applications to access and manipulate this information freely and you have the recipe for a digital disaster.
Since the early days of
computer viruses, it's always been loopholes in the OS or loopholes in the design of applications that's allowed these viruses to develop and obtain the foothold that they have today. Lack of foresight
allowed macro viruses to be written with little or no technical knowledge. Mass mailers, which spread alarmingly quickly, are also made possible because of the ease with which macro code can access the
user's address book.
Question: When will these companies realise that security must come before functionality.
Answer: Never. As long as the marketing departments dictate the
features that they want to see in their product. Their products are feature driven, after all.
So for the sake of nifty features, security is compromised.
The first Bluetooth products are due to hit the
streets in Q4 2000 and Q1 2001. Will the consortium that makes up the Bluetooth working group address these issues properly? We'll find out soon enough, I'm sure.
I Love You!
I tell this to my wife everyday, (well... most days), and it seems to have
less and less effect on her every time she hears it. Of course, she's heard
it many times before - which may explain this. I wonder how she'd react,
though, if her boss sent her an email with "I love you" as the subject line?
Would she be over the moon? Alarmed?
Maybe there'd be feelings of revulsion or curiosity. Whichever one of these feelings came into play, I'd guarantee that within two seconds, that mail would have been opened and it's contents displayed
on her monitor.
She'd have clicked on the attachment and - Bob's your uncle - she'd have been infected. Just like that. Other types of viruses or worms don't even require you to click the attachment - you
simply have to view it in Outlook's preview pane and you're infected.
Imagine in 3 or so years time - when people are using 'communicators' rather than plain old fashioned mobile phones - how quickly this
type of thing could - and will - spread. In fact, we've already had reports of the first worm that uses mobile phones as a mechanism for spreading - It's called VBS Timofonica. This first stab isn't very
successful - mainly because the mobile phones on the market today don't have a 'proper' operating system or enough memory to sustain a virus.
But this doesn't mean that we should be complacent - with
mobile phone companies getting into bed with developers like Palm, Symbian and members of the Bluetooth SIG, (Special Interest Group) - it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see what the next
generation phones/communicators will look like.
Is that a virus in your pocket?
