MIDTERM QUESTION #3

Internet if properly maximized can be used as a medium to the advantage of the company. However, risks and threats are there. Thus, research the following:
1. Identify the possible risk and threats (eg. virus) that can potentially attack a company with internet connection.

2. Case research and analysis:

Vigilante virus attacks MP3 music files

by Stan Beer

Tuesday, 26 April 2005

! Experts at security vendor Sophos, have discovered a worm which has taken the law into its own hands against internet music pirates. However, legal downloaders are also at risk. The W32/Nopir-B worm, which appears to have originated in France, spreads via peer-to-peer file-sharing systems posing as a hacked utility to make copies of commercial DVDs. However, in reality it displays an anti-piracy graphic, and attempts to delete all MP3 music files, disable various system utilities, and wipe .COM programs on the infected PC. "The internet is swamped with people pirating movies and music, costing the entertainment industry millions each year. The Nopir-B worm targets people it believes may be involved in piracy, but fails to discriminate between the true criminals and those who may have MP3 files they have created themselves," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Whichever side of the fence you come down on in regards to internet privacy, there's no debate about the criminal nature of this worm - designed to inflict malicious damage on people's Windows computers." Internet pirates who have illegally distributed music files, movies and TV shows have been in the news recently as ISPs have been ordered in a number of cases to provide identitifying details of those individuals responsible so prosecutions can be brought against them. Last month, a Canadian man lost his job after it was found he had leaked the first episode of the eagerly anticipated BBC science fiction series "Doctor Who" onto the internet three weeks before its official broadcast. Although there have only been a small reports of the worm, Sophos recommends computer users ensure their anti-virus software is up-to-date, and that companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend them from the threats of both spam and viruses.

2. a Identify one company that had experienced an attacked from the internet.

Elk Cloner is one of the first known microcomputer viruses that spread "in the wild," i.e., outside the computer system or lab in which it was written.Elk Cloner spread by infecting the using a technique now known as a "Apple II operating system boot sector" virus.

2. b Describe the attack

Elk Cloner spread by infecting the Apple II operating system using a technique now known as a "boot sector" virus. If a computer booted from an infected floopy disk, a copy of the virus was placed in the computer's memory. When an uninfected disk was inserted into the computer, Elk Cloner would be copied to the disk, thus allowing it to spread from disk to disk.

An infected computer would display a short poem on every 50th boot. Elk Cloner did not cause deliberate harm, but Apple DOS disks without a standard image had their reserved tracks overwritten. The aforementioned poem follows:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes, it's Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too

Send in the Cloner!

2.c Identify the damages done and the solutions adopted to reverse the damages and to protect the company from future threats.
According to contemporary reports, the virus was rather contagious, successfully infecting the floppies of most people Skrenta knew, and upsetting many of them. Part of the "success," of course, was that people were not at all wary of the potential problem (virus infection could have been avoided by not inserting floppies into computers without hard-booting them first), nor were virus scanners or cleaners available. The virus could still be removed, but it required an elaborate manual effort.