Online English Conversation Course for PhD Students
Monday, 4 May 2020
WEEK 4 [04.05 - 10.05] Viruss
Do you remember the WinCIH virus, also popularly known as Chernobyl? A lot of myths grew up about it, some of which were obviously not true. The virus itself is almost forgotten today - only older computer users have heard about it or even had the unpleasantness to experience it on their own equipment. The most interesting thing in its history is that it was never intended to spread and cause the damage it did.
1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
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I'm sick and tired of that topic...seriously, everyone talking olny about viruses. Sorry for brief answers...
ReplyDelete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
Yes, sure. Like everyone. Who don't ever have a flu/rubella?
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
This one which is spreading easili and cause serious implications.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
I don't know any type of viruses...I think that every viruses will change in the future so literally they will be new. They will attack in the same way as now. The way of spreading doesn't change.
I'm sure you haven't even read this post, much less the article. The topic, apart from the name, is completely unrelated to the virus pandemic
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteYes, I once caught a virus that would write random values at the end of .doc and .xls files and lost all of my documents. It was scary. I felt like crying. Before I knew it all went to the bin.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
One that physically destroys your computer. The second dangerous virus is the one that cleanses your bank account. Suddenly sorry to have 0.00 PLN.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
It all depends how much we give our lives to machines. It's possible that then viruses will arise that will attack life at the behest of others. These will be the new viruses.
Data loss is a very sad thing. Especially if you've worked long on these texts. The kind of viruses that add random data to a file is very dangerous.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteIt may be surprising, but I don't recall ever being the victim of a virus. But I've always been quite a conscious computer user.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
Definitely those depriving us of access to our data and requiring a ransom payment. But also those that directly follow our actions to get to our bank accounts, although today these are usually caused by excessive carelessness of the user.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
Our account and data security is getting better. That is why viruses need to be more personalized and clever. I think they will now be only one of the pillars of very advanced phishing attacks.
Using the Internet has its invaluable advantages, but that it is not free of threats. You're right. I used to catch viruses when I was little. I had no idea how it all worked. Avoiding and anticipating threats is the best safeguard.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteI heard about the Chernobyl virus, but was not a victim of such viruses. I think like everyone else, I had Trojan horses (which cannot be attributed to viruses) or a victim of phishing, but I have not dealt with viruses yet
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
Those who have access to payment data. Of course it’s unpleasant if the virus can steal my personal data, but I can’t imagine anything worse than stealing my payment methods
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
Everything is improving, and our protection on the Internet, and the possibility of hacking our protection on the Internet) I think the goal of the virus will always be to steal our data, which means I don’t see a big change in the types of viruses in the future
Thank you for answering. I also believe that currently the greatest threat is posed by viruses that are trying to extort bank passwords from us. A properly prepared website, which is illusory similar to a real bank's website, allows to steal sensitive data. You just have to encourage potential victims to click on the link, e.g. by sending an e-mail pretending to be a bank message.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteI weren't victim of any kind of virus. I don’t remember when I caught a virus last time. I have a very good software to protect me from any kind of infections and visit only safe websites.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
I think the most dangerous type of virus is rootkit. It can hide from antivirus himself or eg. hide trojans. Another very dangerous type of virus is ransomware. It can block OS and demand a ransom.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
It’s difficult to say. At the beginning virus was the most dangerous threat. Today are rootkits, ransomware or trojans. In the future they may be viruses that attacked many kind of hardware and trying to steal our privacy and money. They will use neural network to paralyzing our life and get our money.
I'd be very afraid of a computer virus that would have an artificial intelligence algorithm implemented in its code. Artificial intelligence in many fields increases the scope of automation of the activities normally performed by humans. So why couldn't hackers use it. We have what we call hostile Artificial Intelligence. It's a concept for defining cybercriminals. One element of artificial intelligence is machine learning. The algorithm acquires knowledge from so-called teachable data.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteNo. For some strange reason, none of my systems was ever infected with any virus. I'm a victim in other (a bit funny) way - for one legacy projects I deal with, I need some installers of ancient tools to bundle into final delivery. Those installers are now flagged by antiviruses (some navbar hijacking), and organisation policy does not allow me to disable this, so every week I have to click "do nothing" on bunch of files.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
I'm not sure those are viruses anymore, but the most dangerous in my opinion is the malware that propagates over routers, security cameras and recorders and other IoT stuff. It allows creating of massive botnets, and can remain undetected for years.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
I don't think there any unused vectors of attack left. New types would be possible on new types of devices then. Smartwatches maybe?
Nowadays, there are more and more hacking attacks on the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, for which malware is used. They account for 78% of all detected infections in telecommunications networks. So far, networks of devices taken over by cybercriminals have been primarily used to carry out DDoS attacks, which consist in cutting off access to Internet services by directing mass, artificial traffic to them.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteCurrently in a time when windows defender is first line of support in such cases I don’t even know when some malicious software is trying to make some harm to my computer. But back then when antivirus program were just placed on the market, from time to time some Trojan horse appeared at my system. The easiest solution in that case was to reinstall Windows and I did it a couple of times, even though that was simple procedure it took plenty of time and it threat losing some data. Fortunately I bought well known Kaspersky antivirus software and my problems get ended.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
I was always afraid of virus that destroyed hardware, then you don’t only loos all of your data stored on a drive but also a valued machine. Another dangerous type of virus are those that extort data, for example passwords. Being a victim of such phishing can cost a lot especially if it concerns bank account details.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
Taking in to account how big part of our live take place in the network, especially nowadays I think that our identity might by the target of new viruses, or to be exact, hackers that benefit from activity of that programs. We can do more and more official stuff online so the field for extortion becoming very wide.
Anti-virus programs protect our computers at all times, but it is often the case that they warn us of dangers that are not there. When I used additional antivirus programs, I also experienced constant warnings about an attempted attack. The cheaper the program, the more often it happened.
Delete1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteNo, I was very secure with this kind of stuff :)
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
The one that can damage some SCADA system and destroy crucial infrastructure. These kinds of viruses have a real influence on security.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
I think there is a lot of them, but they are more specialized. Nowadays, dealing with IT security is a big deal and can make you rich. So, if there is a 0day, you are not writing any bug to mess around with random people's PC. You would like instead to go to the NSO Group and sell it so they can use it in the Pegasus software :)
Finding and exploiting such a gap can bring very big profits. You mentioned a software called Pegasus. Two Israeli companies, NSO Group and Cellebrite, have developed the world's most effective software today, which can hack and steal our most sensitive data from every possible source without any problems.
Delete1. Yes. I don't know what his name was, but it worked by cleaning all data from USB flash drives connected to the infected computer. Fortunately, I was able to recover the data, but pendrive was broken. It was the big bane of our cathedral when someone infected all computers with this virus. And after that, believing my Antivirus, nothing attacks my computer, and even if the antivirus immediately moves these files to quarantine.
ReplyDelete2. The virus that I fear the most is one that cleans the entire hard disk. Recently, I have a backup on a portable disk, but still if something like that happened I would be devastated. Other viruses that are very dangerous are those that have access to our private data, cameras, bank accounts and send data to the hacker on a regular basis. I know that many people obstruct the cameras on their laptops. I always wondered if a virus that would connect to my webcam that has a diode on when the camera is active would be able to turn off the diode and record something even if I thought the camera was turned off.
3. Honestly, I don't know. But if I were to speculate about what would they attack, I think that control centers, e.g. power supply. A prolonged power outage would cause huge chaos among people. Sooner than attacking the computers of ordinary users, large corporations storing millions of customer data and turning large amounts of money that could be embezzled are exposed to attacks by new types of viruses.
I also brought an infected flash drive from my university. It worked on the principle that it moves the files to the folder it creates as a system, so you can't see them.
DeleteThere are many variations of it. Once I had it, I managed it in an easy way. I enabled the option to show hidden files (the system show I always have on) and found the directory to which the files were moved. This worm was called the Gamarue worm. Important thing. Scanning the pendriva itself wasn't a bug in your system, the best proof that it went on your pendriva was from your computer system at the university.
I probably was infected by some viruses but I don't remember any details.
ReplyDeleteThe most dangerous viruses are those with a long incubation period while making the host infectious from the very beginning. It makes scale of the dissemination really large.
New kind of viruses? In recent history there were a lot of viruses attacking respiratory system so I assume this trend will hold. So I bet there will be more SARS like viruses.
1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteFortunately I was not a victim of a cyber virus. I have a good antivirus which sometimes warns me that “Some Trojans horses or other viruses were detected and deleted”. I hope that my antivirus works in proper way and it has detected and deleted every viruses and defended my computer from any attempt of attack. When I was a student, some of my friends had a virus caught when they connected a pendrive to the University’s computer.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
I am not an expert in computer viruses, but I think that boot sector virus could be one of the most dangerous. This type of viruses infects the master boot recorded. Removing a virus is very complicated and hard and the virus often requires the system to be formatted. It spreads through removable media mainly. The virus encrypts the computer's boot sector and damages the code. Nowadays, people often use removable media, so this type of computer viruses can spread rapidly when it comes to the ordinary user perspective. The comforting thing is fact that the BIOS architecture of newer PC units reduced its effectiveness over the past years.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
I don't know, but nowadays, progressively more issues can be solved via Internet, including issues related to e.g. loans or payments. I think that more and more things can be dealt with over the Internet so hackers will have more and more opportunities to carry out attacks related to human activity from the digital world.
1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteIn high school I used windows and the anti-virus detected hundreds of viruses.
Mainly Trojans and keyloggers. Currently, I use Linux and OSX and I'm more worried about data leaks from portals, which often happens to even governmental institutions.
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
The ransomware type virus caused the biggest financial losses.
Petya blocked infected devices, demanding $ 300 in bitcoins for reopening access to them. Caused a failure of computer systems, including the government of Ukraine and the National Bank of Russia, the Russian central bank, the Rosneft oil concern, and even the radiation monitoring system of the inactive Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Losses caused by the Petya virus were record-breaking - it was the most expensive in history, according to F-Secure experts, a single cyber-security incident. It cost more than any data leakage or hacker attack. According to estimates, losses of companies all over the world amounted to even 10 billion dollars.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
In the distant cyberpunk future, we will use support chips, maybe artificial limbs. Probably, viruses will also appear on this type of equipment.
Or maybe, as in the Total Recall movie - someone will load memories to our brain and viruses could also mix up there. For example we will get a memory - that we borrowed money from someone and now we have to give it back.
1. Were you a victim of some kind of virus?
ReplyDeleteYes, I fell victim to a virus (probably a Trojan horse), but now I can't remember exactly. However, I know that I could not start the operating system (most likely it attacked files responsible for starting the operating system).
2. What types of virus do you think are the most dangerous?
In my opinion, the most dangerous are viruses that cannot be detected by any anti-virus software. They are running in the background at this time and the user is not even aware that the computer has been infected.
3. What new types of viruses will emerge in the future? How and what will they attack?
There will certainly be programs trying to select access data to many accounts (not just bank accounts). Currently, data is a very valuable "currency" in which to invest. Another example may be viruses that install in the form of software and take control of part of the computer's computing power in order to increase their chances, e.g. in cryptocurrencies.