INFORMATON SYSTEM
SECURITY
A SHORT HISTORY OF
COMPUTER VIRUS
1945 Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper discovers a
moth trapped between relays in a navy computer. She
called it a “ BUG” a term used since late 19th centaury to
refer to problems with electrical drives Murray Hopper also
coined the term debugging to describe efforts to fix
computer problem.
by Brain kerbs.
‘Information Security System – Why, What and How?’
WHAT IS I.S. SECURITY
• Computer security is the effort to create a secure
computing platform, designed so that agents can
only perform actions that have been allowed. This
involves specifying and implementing a security
policy. The action in question can be reduced to
operations of access, modification and deletion.
computer security can be seen as a subfield of
security engineering, which looks at broader
security issues in addition to computer security.
Information Security – Why is it an issue?
Because, if the information asset is not
suitably protected, it can be
given away or stolen without depriving you
of it
modified without your knowledge to make
it worthless
lost without trace or hope of recovery
Information Security – Why is it an issue?
• With increased use of IT in business activities,
every organisation has a responsibility to
• manage security related business risks
effectively
• implement cost-effective security measures
• create an environment of Trust & Confidence
aimed at satisfying the security concerns of all
stakeholders
• be pro-active on security matters
Information Security – General trends
• The greatest threat to information
security comes from outside-
competitors, hackers , viruses -
AND majority of the security
problems are attributed to
insiders).
• “Amateurs hack machines,
professionals hack people”
WHAT IS NEEDED
There are three important questions that organisations must
answer when addressing security considerations of their
information and information systems:
Selection of security controls (is it adequate?)
Implementation of security controls (is it effective?) and
Assurance of security controls (does it work?)
“The answers to these questions cannot be given in isolation.
They must be given in the context of an Information Security
program for the organisation that identifies, controls and
mitigates risks to its information and information systems.”
TYP ES OF IN FEC TI ONS
VIRUS
E-MAIL VIRUS
WORMS
TROJAN
HORSES
SPYWARE &
ADWARE
What is a good I.S. SECURITY
Prevention Threat
Detection
Incident
Repression
Damage
Recovery
Correction
WHAT IS A VIRUS
A VIRUS IS A SMALL PIECE OF
SOFTWARE THAT PIGGYBACKS ON
REAL PROGRAMS.FOR EX:-A VIRUS
MIGHT ATTACH IT SELF TO A
PROGRAM SUCH AS A SPREADSHEET
PROGRAM.EACH TIME THE SPREAD
SHEET PROGRAM RUNS,THE VIRUS
RUNS AND HAVE THE CHANCE TO
REPRODUCE.
BOOT SECTOR VIRUSES
► Asvirus creators got more sophisticated,
they learned new tricks. The ability to load
viruses into memory so they could keep
running in the background as long as the
computer remained on. This gave viruses a
much more effective way to replicate
themselves. Another trick was the ability to
infect the boot sector on floppy disks and
hard disk. Boot sector contains a tiny
program that tells the comp. how to load the
rest. By putting its code in the boot sector, a
virus can guarantee it gets executed. And on
college campus where lots of people share
machines they spread like wildfire
E-MAIL VIRUSES
An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail
messages, and usually replicates itself by
automatically mailing itself to dozens of people
in the victim’s e-mail address book.
examples:-
Melissa virus:- in 1999,the virus was so
powerful that it forced Microsoft and a number of
other very large companies to completely turn off
there e-mail systems until the virus could be
contained.
Some more example
I LOVE YOU VIRUS :- appeared on 4th may 2000, it
contained a piece of code as an attachment.
People who double clicked on the attachment
allowed the code to execute. The code sent copies
of itself to everyone in the victim’s address book
and then started corrupting files on the victim’s
machine.
What’s a “worm”
A worm is a computer program that
has the ability to copy itself from
machine to machine. Worms normally
move around and infect other
machines through computer network.
Using a network, a worm can expand
from a single copy incredibly quickly. A
worm usually exploits some sort of
security hole in a piece of software or
the operating system.
EXAMPLE
SLAMMER WORM :- Caused
mayhem in January 2003
exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL
server.
MYDOOM WORM :- Infected
approximately a quarter million
computers in a single day in
January 2004
CODE RED
Worm use up computer time and network
bandwidth when they are replicating, and
they often have some sort of evil intent. A
worm called code red made huge headlines
in 2001. Experts predicted that this worm
could clog the internet so effectively that
things would completely grind to a halt.
Ex:- code red replicated itself over 250000
times in approx. 9 hr. on July/ 19 2001
TROJAN HORSES
A Trojan horse is simple a computer
program. The program claims to do one
thing (it may clam to be a game) but
instead does damage when you run it (it
may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses
have no way to replicate.
SPYWARE & ADWARE
• They are small files that are attached to
almost anything that you may download
and are designed to track where you go
and what you view on the internet. they
then serve up popup advertisements.
Some spyware and adware will even steal
your personal information and credit card
numbers. Advertisers, web designers, and
even governments are using the internet
to spy on you.
Virus hoaxes
• There are lot of viruses
out there. But some aren’t
really out there at all.
Virus hoaxes are
nuisance, as they may
lead some users to
routinely ignore all virus
warning messages, they
are there just to
CONFUSE us.
HOW TO GET RID OF
Ways of prevention
Biometric System:- A biometric control
is an automated method of verifying
the identity of a person, based on
physiological or behavioral
characteristic.
Example:- hand geometry, blood
vessel pattern in the retina of an eye,
voice, signature, keystroke
dynamics, facial recognition, facial
thermography, fingerprint, iris scan.
Firewall
Basically, a firewall is a barrier to keep
destructive forces away from your property.
Infact that’s why its called firewall. Its job is
similar to a physical firewall that keeps a fire
from spreading from one area to the next.
Many Antispware software's
are available in
market.
There are many other software’s
available to help out your PC
Honey pot
Encryption
Intrusion
detection
Adwarealert
etc
