Antivirus software


Antivirus software, also known as anti-malware, is software intended to prevent, detect, and remove malware.
Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name. However, with the proliferation of other malware, antivirus software started to protect against other computer threats. Some products also include protection from malicious URLs, spam, and phishing.

History

1971–1980 period (pre-antivirus days)

The first known computer virus appeared in 1971 and was dubbed the "Creeper virus". This computer virus infected Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10 mainframe computers running the TENEX operating system.
The Creeper virus was eventually deleted by a program created by Ray Tomlinson and known as "The Reaper". Some people consider "The Reaper" the first antivirus software ever written – it may be the case, but it is important to note that the Reaper was actually a virus itself specifically designed to remove the Creeper virus.
The Creeper virus was followed by several other viruses. The first known that appeared "in the wild" was "Elk Cloner", in 1981, which infected Apple II computers.
In 1983, the term "computer virus" was coined by Fred Cohen in one of the first ever published academic papers on computer viruses. Cohen used the term "computer virus" to describe programs that: "affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a copy of itself.".
The first IBM PC compatible "in the wild" computer virus, and one of the first real widespread infections, was "Brain" in 1986. From then, the number of viruses has grown exponentially. Most of the computer viruses written in the early and mid-1980s were limited to self-reproduction and had no specific damage routine built into the code. That changed when more and more programmers became acquainted with computer virus programming and created viruses that manipulated or even destroyed data on infected computers.
Before internet connectivity was widespread, computer viruses were typically spread by infected floppy disks. Antivirus software came into use, but was updated relatively infrequently. During this time, virus checkers essentially had to check executable files and the boot sectors of floppy disks and hard disks. However, as internet usage became common, viruses began to spread online.

1980–1990 period (early days)

There are competing claims for the innovator of the first antivirus product. Possibly, the first publicly documented removal of an "in the wild" computer virus was performed by Bernd Fix in 1987.
In 1987, Andreas Lüning and Kai Figge, who founded G Data Software in 1985, released their first antivirus product for the Atari ST platform. In 1987, the Ultimate Virus Killer was also released. This was the de facto industry standard virus killer for the Atari ST and Atari Falcon, the last version of which was released in April 2004. In 1987, in the United States, John McAfee founded the McAfee company and, at the end of that year, he released the first version of VirusScan. Also in 1987, Peter Paško, Rudolf Hrubý, and Miroslav Trnka created the first version of NOD antivirus.
In 1987, Fred Cohen wrote that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible computer viruses.
Finally, at the end of 1987, the first two heuristic antivirus utilities were released: Flushot Plus by Ross Greenberg and Anti4us by Erwin Lanting. In his O'Reilly book, Malicious Mobile Code: Virus Protection for Windows, Roger Grimes described Flushot Plus as "the first holistic program to fight malicious mobile code."
However, the kind of heuristic used by early AV engines was totally different from those used today. The first product with a heuristic engine resembling modern ones was F-PROT in 1991. Early heuristic engines were based on dividing the binary into different sections: data section, code section. Indeed, the initial viruses re-organized the layout of the sections, or overrode the initial portion of a section in order to jump to the very end of the file where malicious code was located—only going back to resume execution of the original code. This was a very specific pattern, not used at the time by any legitimate software, which represented an elegant heuristic to catch suspicious code. Other kinds of more advanced heuristics were later added, such as suspicious section names, incorrect header size, regular expressions, and partial pattern in-memory matching.
In 1988, the growth of antivirus companies continued. In Germany, Tjark Auerbach founded Avira and released the first version of AntiVir. In Spain, Carlos Jiménez released the first version of his antivirus. In Bulgaria, Vesselin Bontchev released his first freeware antivirus program. Also Frans Veldman released the first version of ThunderByte Antivirus, also known as TBAV. In Czechoslovakia, Pavel Baudiš and Eduard Kučera founded Avast Software and released their first version of avast! antivirus. In June 1988, in South Korea, Ahn Cheol-Soo released its first antivirus software, called V1. Finally, in autumn 1988, in the United Kingdom, Alan Solomon founded S&S International and created his Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit.
Also in 1988, a mailing list named VIRUS-L was started on the BITNET/EARN network where new viruses and the possibilities of detecting and eliminating viruses were discussed. Some members of this mailing list were: Alan Solomon, Eugene Kaspersky, Friðrik Skúlason, John McAfee, Luis Corrons, Mikko Hyppönen, Péter Szőr, Tjark Auerbach and Vesselin Bontchev.
In 1989, in Iceland, Friðrik Skúlason created the first version of F-PROT Anti-Virus. Meanwhile, in the United States, Symantec launched its first Symantec antivirus for Macintosh. SAM 2.0, released March 1990, incorporated technology allowing users to easily update SAM to intercept and eliminate new viruses, including many that didn't exist at the time of the program's release.
In the end of the 1980s, in United Kingdom, Jan Hruska and Peter Lammer founded the security firm Sophos and began producing their first antivirus and encryption products. In the same period, in Hungary, VirusBuster was founded.

1990–2000 period (emergence of the antivirus industry)

In 1990, in Spain, Mikel Urizarbarrena founded Panda Security. In Hungary, the security researcher Péter Szőr released the first version of Pasteur antivirus.
In 1990, the Computer Antivirus Research Organization was founded. In 1991, CARO released the "Virus Naming Scheme", originally written by Friðrik Skúlason and Vesselin Bontchev. Although this naming scheme is now outdated, it remains the only existing standard that most computer security companies and researchers ever attempted to adopt. CARO members includes: Alan Solomon, Costin Raiu, Dmitry Gryaznov, Eugene Kaspersky, Friðrik Skúlason, Igor Muttik, Mikko Hyppönen, Morton Swimmer, Nick FitzGerald, Padgett Peterson, Peter Ferrie, Righard Zwienenberg and Vesselin Bontchev.
In 1991, in the United States, Symantec released the first version of Norton AntiVirus. In the same year, in the Czech Republic, Jan Gritzbach and Tomáš Hofer founded AVG Technologies, although they released the first version of their Anti-Virus Guard only in 1992. On the other hand, in Finland, F-Secure released the first version of their antivirus product. F-Secure claims to be the first antivirus firm to establish a presence on the World Wide Web.
In 1991, the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research was founded to further antivirus research and improve development of antivirus software.
In 1992, in Russia, Igor Danilov released the first version of SpiderWeb, which later became Dr.Web.
In 1994, AV-TEST reported that there were 28,613 unique malware samples in their database.
Over time other companies were founded. In 1996, in Romania, Bitdefender was founded and released the first version of Anti-Virus eXpert. In 1997, in Russia, Eugene Kaspersky and Natalya Kaspersky co-founded security firm Kaspersky Lab.
In 1996, there was also the first "in the wild" Linux virus, known as "Staog".
In 1999, AV-TEST reported that there were 98,428 unique malware samples in their database.

2000–2005 period

In 2000, Rainer Link and Howard Fuhs started the first open source antivirus engine, called OpenAntivirus Project.
In 2001, Tomasz Kojm released the first version of ClamAV, the first ever open source antivirus engine to be commercialised. In 2007, ClamAV was bought by Sourcefire, which in turn was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2013.
In 2002, in United Kingdom, Morten Lund and Theis Søndergaard co-founded the antivirus firm BullGuard.
In 2005, AV-TEST reported that there were 333,425 unique malware samples in their database.

2005–2014 period

In 2007, AV-TEST reported a number of 5,490,960 new unique malware samples only for that year. In 2012 and 2013, antivirus firms reported a new malware samples range from 300,000 to over 500,000 per day.
Over the years it has become necessary for antivirus software to use several different strategies and detection algorithms, as well as to check an increasing variety of files, rather than just executables, for several reasons:
  • Powerful macros used in word processor applications, such as Microsoft Word, presented a risk. Virus writers could use the macros to write viruses embedded within documents. This meant that computers could now also be at risk from infection by opening documents with hidden attached macros.
  • The possibility of embedding executable objects inside otherwise non-executable file formats can make opening those files a risk.
  • Later email programs, in particular Microsoft's Outlook Express and Outlook, were vulnerable to viruses embedded in the email body itself. A user's computer could be infected by just opening or previewing a message.
In 2005, F-Secure was the first security firm that developed an Anti-Rootkit technology, called BlackLight.
Because most users are usually connected to the Internet on a continual basis, Jon Oberheide first proposed a Cloud-based antivirus design in 2008.
In February 2008 McAfee Labs added the industry-first cloud-based anti-malware functionality to VirusScan under the name Artemis. It was tested by AV-Comparatives in February 2008 and officially unveiled in August 2008 in McAfee VirusScan.
Cloud AV created problems for comparative testing of security software – part of the AV definitions was out of testers control thus making results non-repeatable. As a result, Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation started working on method of testing cloud products which was adopted on May 7, 2009.
In 2011, AVG introduced a similar cloud service, called Protective Cloud Technology.