The history of anti-virus software
Today computer viruses are the most active and common reason of information crippling. With the appearance of first computer viruses first anti-virus programs appeared as well to delete any thread.
The first virus appeared in late 1960s and all damages it caused on the only computer – the one it had been created on. But that was more like entertainment for its developers. Before the Internet appeared viruses had been spread via infected floppy disks. Programs able to remove them also existed but they were updated rather seldom. Network threads appeared with the appearance of the Internet. Released in 1975 the Creeper became the first one. The first antivirus called Reeper was developed in response to that. However, this virus as well as the majority of viruses released in early 1980s couldn't spread freely so they were not able to do any serious damage to users' computers. The first really malicious virus able to destroy information was written in 1981.
In 1984 Fred Cohen was the first to use the term "virus" at the Seventh conference on information security held in the USA. The first anti-virus software called CHK4BOMB and BOMBSQAD appeared in winter. American programmer Andy Hopkins was the creator of these programs. CHK4BOMB analyzed the module text and detected dangerous code sections along with suspicious messages. The BOMBSQAD aim was to analyze burning and formatting operations performed via BIOS. On detecting a forbidden operation a user banned or authorized it.
The first modern antivirus protecting against virus attacks was DRPROTECT. This software was developed by Gee Wong in 1985. Its main principle was blocking all operations performed via BIOS. On detecting such operation the antivirus demanded restarting the system.
Anti-virus programs created in 1980s consisted of dozens of virus signatures stored in the program body. Very often developers gave up signature data encrypting with one of antivirus function being search for virus codes in files. That's why one antivirus program sometimes happened to find a virus into another.
Development and enhancement of viruses caused upgrade of the anti-virus software. Some time later, large companies replaced enthusiastic programmers who were developing and selling anti-virus software.
The MtE software made writing viruses much easier. It generated polymorphous code and it could be used not only by experienced programmers but also by beginners. Polymorphous viruses start spreading like wild fire, which led to inefficiency of existing ways of overcoming them, such as meshing algorithm languages of code comparison. Code emulator was developed to figure this problem out. The emulator removed the encrypted part of a polymorphous virus and affected the virus body. The first program using code emulator became Yevheniy Kaspersky's antivirus called AVP.
New protection systems appeared along with code emulator in 1990s. They were statistical analysis, cryptoanalysis, behavior blocker and heuristic analyzer. Even today many antiviruses are functioning on the basis of these systems.
With growing complexity of software, requirements towards anti-virus programs and their developers have risen as well. For example, after release of Windows along with a wide variety of its programs it became necessary to check files immediately the moment they are addressed. Such new requirements led to the severe reduction of the anti-virus software developer number. However, those remaining became more skilled and professional. More complicated and reliable protection methods were devised. For example, firewall appeared that was a network traffic filter.
Today struggle with computer viruses is going on. More secure and perfect programs and protection methods are being developed. The number of companies developing antivirus software is increasing dramatically.