History Of Computer Virus - Part 3

This Article Taken From http://www.cknow.com

Dr. Solomon: 1989 - Datacrime

During 1989 things really started to move. The Fu Manchu virus (a modification of Jerusalem) was sent anonymously to a virus researcher in the UK, and the 405 virus (a modification of the overwriting virus in the Burger book) was sent to another UK researcher. A third UK researcher wrote a virus and sent it to another UK researcher; in 1989, the UK was where it was all happening. But not quite all. In 1989, the Bulgarians started getting interested in viruses, and Russia was beginning to awaken.

In March of 1989, a minor event happened that was to trigger an avalanche. A new virus was written in Holland. A Dutchman calling himself Fred Vogel (a very common Dutch name) contacted a UK virus researcher, and said that he had found this virus all over his hard disk. He also said that it was called Datacrime, and that he was worried that it would trigger on the 13th of the next month.

When the virus was disassembled, it was found that on any day after October 12th, it would trigger a low level format of cylinder zero of the hard disk, which would, on most hard disks, wipe out the File Allocation Table, and leave the user effectively without any data. It would also display the virus' name: Datacrime virus. A straightforward write-up of the effect of this virus was published, but it was another non-memory-resident virus, and so highly unlikely to spread.

However, the write-up was reprinted by a magazine, another magazine repeated the story, a third party embellished it a bit, and by June it was becoming an established fact that it would trigger on October 12th (not true, it triggers on any day after the 12th, up till December 31st) and that it would low level format the whole hard disk. In America, the press started calling it "Columbus Day virus" (October 12th) and it was suggested that it had been written by Norwegian terrorists, angry at the fact that Eric the Red had discovered America, not Columbus.

Meanwhile, in Holland, the Dutch police were doing one of the things that falls within those things that police are supposed to do: crime prevention. Datacrime virus was obviously a crime, and the way to prevent it was to run a detector for it. So they commissioned a programmer to write a Datacrime detector, and offered it at Dutch police stations for $1. It sold really well. But it gave a number of false alarms, and it had to be recalled and replaced with version 2. There were long queues outside the Dutch police stations, lots of confusion about whether anyone actually had this virus (hardly anyone did, but the false alarms muddied the waters).

If the police take something seriously, it must be serious, right? So in July, large Dutch companies started asking IBM if viruses were a serious threat. Datacrime isn't, but there is a distinct possibility that a company could get Jerusalem, Cascade or Stoned (or Italian, in those days before 8088 computers became a rarity). So what is IBM doing about this threat, they asked?

IBM had internal-use-only anti-virus software. They used this to check incoming media, and to make sure that an accident like Lehulpe could never happen again. IBM had a problem: if they didn't offer this software to their customers, they could look very bad if on October 13th a lot of computers went down. The technical people knew that this wouldn't happen, but obviously they knew that someone, somewhere, might have important data on a computer that would get hit by Datacrime. IBM had to make a decision about whether to release their software, and they had a very strict deadline to work to; October the 13th would be too late.

In September of 1989, IBM sent out version 1.0 of the IBM scanning software, together with a letter telling their customers what it was, and why they were sending it out. When you get a letter like that from IBM, and a disk, you would be pretty brave to take no notice, so a lot of large companies scanned a lot of computers, for the first time. Hardly anyone found Datacrime, but there were instances of the usual viruses.

October 13th fell on a Friday, so there was a double event: Jerusalem and Datacrime. In the US, Datacrime (Columbus Day) had been hyped out of all proportion for a virus that is as uninfective as this one, and it is highly likely that not a single user had the virus. In Europe (especially in Holland) there might have been a few, but not many.

In London, the Royal National Institute for the Blind announced that they'd had a hit, and had lost large amounts of valuable research data, and months of work. We investigated this particular incident, and the truth was that they had a very minor outbreak of Jerusalem, and a few easily-replaced program files had been deleted. Four computers were infected. But the RNIB outbreak has passed into legend as a Great Disaster. Actually, the RNIB took more damage from the invasion of the television and print media than from the virus.

By the end of 1989, there were a couple of dozen viruses that we knew about, but we didn't know that in Bulgaria and Russia, big things were brewing.

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History of Computer Virus - Part 2

This Article was taken from http://www.cknow.com
Dr. Solomon: 1988 - The Game Begins

The year 1988 was fairly quiet, as far as virus writing went. Mostly, it was the year that anti-virus vendors started appearing, making a fuss about what was at that time only a potential problem, and not selling very much anti-virus software. The vendors were all small companies, selling their software for very low prices (#5 or $10 was common). Some of them were shareware, some were freeware. Occasionally some larger company tried to pop up, but no-one was paying serious cash to solve a potential problem.

In some ways, that was a pity, because 1988 was a very virus-friendly year. It gave Stoned, Cascade and Jerusalem a chance to spread undetected, and to establish a pool of infected objects that will ensure that they never become rare.

It was in 1988 that IBM realised that it had to take viruses seriously. This was not because of the well-known Christmas tree worm, which was pretty easy to deal with. It was because IBM had an outbreak of Cascade at the Lehulpe site, and found itself in

the embarrassing position of having to inform its customers that they might have become infected there. In fact, there was no real problem, but from this point on, IBM took viruses very seriously indeed, and the High Integrity Computing Laboratory in Yorktown was given responsibility for the IBM research effort in this field.

1988 saw a few scattered, sporadic outbreaks of Brain, Italian, Stoned, Cascade and Jerusalem. It also saw the final arguments about whether viruses existed or not. Peter Norton, in an interview, said that they were an urban legend, like the crocodiles in the New York sewers, and one UK expert claimed that he had a proof that viruses were a figment of the imagination. In 1988, the real virus experts would debate with such people; after that year, real virus experts would simply walk away from anyone who had such absurd beliefs.

Each outbreak of a virus was dealt with on a case-by-case basis. One American claimed that he had a fully equipped mobile home for dealing with virus outbreaks (and another one extrapolated to the notion that soon there would be many such mobile units). Existing software was used to detect boot sector viruses (by inspecting the boot sector), and one-off software was written for dealing with outbreaks of Cascade and Jerusalem.

In 1988, a virus that is called "Virus-B" was written. This is another virus that doesn't go memory resident, and it is a modification of another virus that deletes files on Friday 13th. When this virus is run, it displays "WARNING!!!! THIS PROGRAM IS INFECTED WITH VIRUS-B! IT WILL INFECT EVERY .COM FILE IN THE CURRENT SUBDIRECTORY!". A virus that is as obvious as that, was clearly not written to spread. It was obviously written as a demonstration virus. Virus researchers are often asked for "harmless viruses" or "viruses for demonstration"; most researchers offer some alternative, such as an overhead foil, or a non-virus program that does a falling letters display. But it looks as if VIRUS-B was written with the intention of giving it away as a demonstration virus - hence the warning. And, indeed, we find that an American company was offering it to "large corporations, universities and research organizations" on a special access basis.

At the end of 1988, a few things happened almost at once. The first was a big outbreak of Jerusalem at a large financial institution, which meant that dozens of people were tied up in doing a big clean-up for several days. The second was that a company called S&S did the first ever Virus Seminar that actually explained what a virus was and how they worked. The third was Friday 13th. [S&S became what was known as Dr. Solomon Software, which has subsequently been purchased by Network Associates.]

It was clear that we couldn't go out and help everyone with a virus, even if we bought a mobile home and equipped it (with what)? It was also clear that the financial institution, and the academic site, could easily handle a virus outbreak, but they didn't have the tools to do the job. All they needed was a decent virus detector, which was not available. So we wrote one, added some other tools that experience said might be useful, and created the first Anti-Virus Toolkit.
In 1989, the first Friday 13th was in January. At the end of 1988, it was clear that Jerusalem was in Spain and the UK, at least, and was in academic as well as commercial sites. Because of the destructive payload in the virus, we felt that if we failed to send out some sort of warning, we would be negligent. But the media grabbed the ball and ran with it; the predictability of the trigger day, together with the feature of it being Friday 13th, caught their imagination, and the first virus media circus was under way.

On the 13th of January, we had dozens of phone calls, mostly from the media wanting to know if the world had ended yet. But we also had calls from a large corporate site, a small vendor of PC hardware, and a couple of single users. We were invaded by TV cameras in droves, and had to schedule them carefully to avoid them tripping over each other. In the middle of all this, the PC Support person from the infected corporation arrived. The TV people wanted nothing better than a victim to film, but the corporate person wanted anonymity. We pretended that he was just one of our staff. Also, at that time, British Rail contacted us; they also had an outbreak of Jerusalem, and they went public on it. Later, they regretted that decision, because for a long time afterwards, their PC Support person was badgered by the media seeking interviews.

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Windows Command Prompt (part 8)

Ok.. after 3 weeks i forget about this cmd part........ next command are:

• Label. Label is used to view or change (rename) the label of computer disk drive. You will get the same result with renaming or giving name in My Computer.
  Here is the syntax : label [drive:][label], so if you going to give name or rename your C:\ drive, just type:
  
  label C: system
  
  [label] can be anything you wish for.

• MD. MD is abbreviation from Make Directory. So it's clearly now that MD is used to creates a new directory/folder on your drive. Just type like:
  
  md music

• MKDIR. same as MD above :)

• MORE. is used to displays a long output in continued area. This command is used after another command in pipe (|). For example:
  dir | more
  net view | more
  etc

• MOVE. this is used to moves files and renames files and directory. There are two option that you can use, so the first option's syntax to move is move [/y | /-y] [drive:][path]filename destination. if you already inside the path, you don't need to write path anymore. For Example:
  
  move c:\windows\explorer.exe D:
  
  or, if you already in windows folder just type:
  
  move explorer.exe D:
  
  and, for rename usage, i advice you use REN command than this complex command :p

• PATH. Path is used to specify the location where MS-DOS looks when using a command. For example, when using the command "format", if the path is not specified to where the command is you will receive bad command or file name. Just type path and there it go

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Lock Your Folder Instantly

Do you have a really personal folder? you don't want anybody to open it?. Sometimes we made our folder hidden and made it as system folder, so you seem to foolish everyone with invisible personal folder, or maybe protect your files using CACLS in cmd (see here). Well maybe you should try this nice and easy to use program. Called Instant LOCK created by MTG Security, with the last version in 3.0. In this version, MTG claims that this program can use to serve multiuser/multi password interface, and each user can set/change his/her password independently from others, OR one person can use different passwords for different files.. Wow...!!

At the first time, you will be asked to enter your own password. This password will be asked everytime you wish to open this program, so don't forget the passwords, or you will lose you data too :p.

 

Then, Instant Lock program will open. Click "add" at bottom of program to add folder which you want to lock. Simply choose one, and your choosen folder will automaticly disappear from where it shoud be (Instant Lock didn't erase or supper hidden your folder, i guest this program move your folder somewhere else. That's why you can't see it even from cmd).

 

 

to Open the locked folder, just click "remove" and your folder with it's files will come back normally (shows "open" at status area).
 

I advice not to install or putting this program's installation destination in frozen partition/harddisk (Deep Freeze), because unknown destination does this program use to put the locked folder. It's not funny to locked your important folder and it's really disappear when you restart your computer because it's placed in frozen partition/hardisk.

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Windows 7 Concept's Screen Shoot

I've just surfing at otakku.com and find my self see some concepts from the newest Windows 7 (according to some issued that it will replace Windows Vista).

Here it is..... Windows 7 Concept

 

  

  

  

 

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How to Kill Unstable Program

If you wonder that your computer has a great processor speed, a number of Gigabyte memory, and nice motherboard but why sometimes your computer seems work so slowly? for so many reason why, maybe there some program that works unstable. So, lets check it out. Press ctrl-alt-del at the same time (open task manager). At "process" tab, scroll down until you find image name (it's your program name) which have a big number at CPU. Here for example in my computer, Mozilla Firefox browser got unstable or almost crash because of something (i didn't mean to threw off on Mozilla!!), and if my computer seem to unresponding, it means i have to end task Mozilla Firefox program.

Every program can become unstable or crash everytime, even a program from microsoft it self. Note: "System Idle Process" will always give you a big number at CPU process, but it won't make your computer crash, it there for some reason, so it's better not to end task it for any reason :)

 

You can also use Cprocess to stop unstable program, and also a virus process. Sometimes you can open your task manager because the viruses has block task manager.

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CameraMouse - Move Pointer Without Mouse

Camera Mouse 2009 is a program that allows you to control the mouse pointer on a Windows computer just by moving your head. You can get cameramouse and software support for free at cameramouse.org

The program was developed to help people with disabilities use the computer. The main audience for this program is people who do not have reliable control of a hand but who can move their head. People with Cerebral Palsy, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, various neurological disorders use this program and its predecessors to run all types of computer software.

How does Camera Mouse work?

Connect a USB video camera (webcam) to the computer. Put the camera on the monitor looking at you. Start up Camera Mouse. Your moving image will appear in the Camera Mouse window. Use the mouse to click on a feature on your face to track. Some unique area of the face. We usually use the inside edge of an eyebrow or eye or the area between the nose and the mouth. A small green square appears at the feature being tracked. As you move your head the square moves with it in the image.

Now press the Scroll Lock key or the Num Lock key or just wait for 4 seconds. The Camera Mouse program takes over control of the mouse pointer on the screen. As you move your head the mouse pointer moves accordingly. If you move the mouse itself (or press the Scroll Lock key or Num Lock key) the control returns to the mouse.
You can adjust the settings by clicking on the Camera Mouse Settings button at the bottom of the window. Here you can change the gains and turn on clicking. Clicking is done using "dwell time," by holding the mouse pointer within a small area of the screen for a second or two. Or you can click in the regular way using the mouse button or a switch.
For double click, or right click, you should need a special program for it. But don't worry, cameramouse.org has prepared for you at its download section and absolutely free.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out with Camera Mouse?
Start with slow but steady head movements. The computer is trying to track the point on your face that you selected. If you make quick, jerky movements the computer might lose tracking. Experiment with your head movements to see what the computer can track and when the computer loses tracking. Pretty soon you should be able to minimize the Camera Mouse program and still control the mouse pointer by moving your head. It's not at all difficult to use Camera Mouse but it does take a couple of minutes of practice.

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How does Optical Mouse Work?

Developed by Agilent Technologies and introduced to the world in late 1999, the optical mouse actually uses a tiny camera to take thousands of pictures every second.

Able to work on almost any surface without a mouse pad, most optical mice use a small, red light-emitting diode (LED) that bounces light off that surface onto a complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. In addition to LEDs, a recent innovation are laser-based optical mice that detect more surface details compared to LED technology. This results in the ability to use a laser-based optical mouse on even more surfaces than an LED mouse.

But now, it seems this optical mouse has a serriously problem, they face their absolutely competitor, a Blue Track Mouse.

Here's how the sensor and other parts of an optical mouse work together:

• The CMOS sensor sends each image to a digital signal processor (DSP) for analysis.
• The DSP detects patterns in the images and examines how the patterns have moved since the previous image.
• Based on the change in patterns over a sequence of images, the DSP determines how far the mouse has moved and sends the corresponding coordinates to the computer.
• The computer moves the cursor on the screen based on the coordinates received from the mouse. This happens hundreds of times each second, making the cursor appear to move very smoothly.

Optical mice have several benefits over track-ball mice:

• No moving parts means less wear and a lower chance of failure.
• There's no way for dirt to get inside the mouse and interfere with the tracking sensors.
• Increased tracking resolution means a smoother response.
• They don't require a special surface, such as a mouse pad.

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Yummy Flash Disk - My SushiDisk

If you bored with you standart looking Flash Disk, hmm.. then maybe you should try this one. My SushiDisk, one of creative product from sushidisk.co.uk.

The producer claims that this product is realistic, life-size, hand-finished, and good enough to eat (if you are hungry enough to eat a Flash.... eagh!!). My SushiDisk has a soft plastic body, kappa-maki or cucumber roll, ikura or salmon roe, tekka-maki or tuna roll, uni or sea urchin, salmon slice, and a tiny USB flash-memory module powered by the computer's USB port. It needs no installation, uses no batteries, and works with any modern PC or MAC. My SushiDisk can also improve the general performance of Windows Vista: a feature called ReadyBoost allows Vista to use the flash memory as extra system RAM.

You might think how to protect this yummy flash drive from virus? well, try to disabling copy to flash drive from your regedit

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Windows Keyboard Shortcut

Sometimes, you will find that using keyboard shortcut is more faster than using click on your mouse to do several thing on Windows. Now, I will show you all Windows keyboard shortcut for you to increase your effective and efficient on work and doing thing on your Windows Computer.

• Alt + Tab. Switch between open applications
• Alt + Shift + Tab. Switch backwards between open applications.
• Alt + double-click. Display the properties of the object you double-click on.
• Ctrl + Tab. With an application that has multiple sub tabs/document windows, this switch between tabs
• Ctrl + Shift + Tab. Same as above but backwards.
• Alt + Print Screen. Create a screen shot (image in clipboard) only for the active screen/program.
• Print Screen. Create a screen shot (image in clipboard) for your entire desktop.
• Ctrl + Alt + Del. Reboot the computer and/or bring up the Windows task manager.
• Ctrl + Esc. Bring up the Windows Start menu. In Windows 3.x this brings up the Task Manager.
• Alt + Esc. Switch Between open applications on taskbar.
• F1. Activates help for current open application.
• F2. Renames selected Icon.
• F3. Starts find from desktop.
• F4. Opens the drive selection when browsing or pull the list of drive selections
• F5. Refresh.
• F10. Activates menu bar.
• Shift + F10. Simulates right-click on selected item.
• Alt + F4. Closes Current open program.
• Ctrl + F4. Closes Window in Program.
• F6. Move cursor to different Windows Explorer panel.
• Ctrl + Space bar. Srops down the window control menu.
• Ctrl + (the '+' key on the keypad). Automatically adjust the widths of all the columns in Windows explorer
• Alt + Enter. Opens properties window of selected icon or program.
• Shift + Del. Permanent Delete - Delete programs/files without throwing them into the recycle bin.
• Holding Shift at Startup. Boot safe mode or by pass system files as the computer is booting.
• Holding Shift. When putting in an audio CD, will prevent CD Player from playing.
• Enter. Activates the highlighted program.
• Alt + Down arrow. Display all available options on drop down menu.
• * (on the keypad). Expands all folders on the currently selected folder or drive in Windows Explorer.
• + (on the keypad). Expands only the currently selected folder in Windows Explorer.
• - (on the keypad). Collapses the currently selected folder in Windows Explorer

• WINKEY. Pressing the Windows key alone will open Start.
• WINKEY + F1. Opens the Microsoft Windows help and support center.
• WINKEY + F3. Opens the Advanced find window in Microsoft Outlook.
• WINKEY + D. Brings the desktop to the top of all other windows.
• WINKEY + M. Minimizes all windows.
  
• WINKEY + SHIFT + M. Undo the minimize done by WINKEY + M and WINKEY + D.
• WINKEY + E. Open Microsoft Explorer.
• WINKEY + Tab. Cycle through open programs through the taskbar.
• WINKEY + F. Display the Windows Search / Find feature.
• WINKEY + CTRL + F. Display the search for computers window.
• WINKEY + F1. Display the Microsoft Windows help.
• WINKEY + R. Open the run window.
• WINKEY + Pause / Break key. Open the system properties window.
• WINKEY + U. Open Utility Manager.
• WINKEY + L. Lock the computer (Windows XP and above only).

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Between DDR & DDR2 Memory

Wondering how to check your memory? click here

A DDR200 module provides a data bandwidth of 1.6GB/s - we also call this PC1600 memory. Likewise, DDR400 is also called PC3200 memory, because it provides 3.2GB/s bandwidth. You can double the bandwidth by using same-speed memory modules in dual channel mode if your system supports it: dual channel DDR400 is capable of delivering 6.4GB/s bandwidth.

DDR2 Introduction

As 2nd generation DDR, the most important improvement found in DDR2 memory is its transfer data rate or bandwidth. As in the case with DDR SDRAM vs. SDRAM, the bandwidth of DDR2 memory can double the DDR’s. 

DDR Memory

DDR2 Memory 

The DDR standard stops at DDR400 (of course, there are lots of DDR500 and even DDR600 products on market, but these are for overclockers), which provides 3.2GB/s bandwidth (single channel). The DDR2 standard starts from DDR2 400 and goes all the way up to DDR2 800 or even higher. DDR2 800 or PC2 6400 can provide 6.4GB/s bandwidth (single channel), twice as much as DDR400. Dual channel DDR2 800 will offer an unparallel 12.8GB/s bandwidth, which is a huge leap from the 6.4GB/s bandwidth of dual channel DDR400 memory.

Since DDR already transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of a clock cycle, how does DDR2 double the bandwidth yet again? The answer lies in the I/O buffer frequency, which is doubled with DDR2. The memory controller in our systems only deal with the I/O buffer on the memory chip. To double the data from the memory array to the I/O buffer, DDR2 utilizes a “4-bit prefetch” as opposed to the “2-bit prefetch” with DDR. This means that 4 bits of data are moved from the memory array to the I/O buffer per data line each core clock cycle. 

The core clock cycle here refers to the cycle time of the memory array, and the frequency of the memory array is half that of the I/O buffer and 1/4 of the data rates. Take DDR2 800 for example: it has an 800MHz data rate, the I/O buffer works at 400MHz, and the core frequency of the memory array is only 200MHz. The core frequency remains the same as DDR400. However, the DDR400 I/O buffer operates at 200MHz. The time of “a core cycle” is therefore the same whether it is DDR400 or DDR2 800.

DDR2 chips may look different than DDR as well, because most DDR chips use the TSOP-II (Thin Small-Outline Package) form factor while DDR2 utilizes the FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array) form factor, which is smaller in size than TSOP-II. FBGA chips also feature less electrical noise than TSOP-II, thus resulting in improved signal integrity at high operating frequencies.

Here is a quick reference of differences between DDR and DDR2.

                     DDR                                       DDR2
Data Rate        200/266/333/400 MHz              400/533/667/800 MHz or Higher
Prefetch Size    2-bit                                     4-bit
CAS Latency     1.5, 2, 2.5, 3                         3, 4, 5
Write Latency   1T                                        Read Latency-1
Voltage            2.5V                                     1.8V
Package Type   TSOP-II                                 FGBA

Besides the enhanced bandwidth, DDR2 also uses less power than DDR by operating on 1.8V - a 28% reduction compared to DDR (2.5V). DDR2 has power saving features such as smaller page sizes and an active power down mode too. These power consumption advantages make DDR2 memory especially suitable for use in notebook computers. 

DDR2 provides some other new features like OCT and OCD as well. We can find lots of resistors around the memory slots on a DDR-supporting motherboard, they are called termination resistors, which are used to eliminated excessive signal noise. You won’t find these resistors on motherboards utilizing DDR2 memory modules, since the termination resistors are built into each of the memory chips on the module, which is far closer to the source of the noise. This feature is called OCT or On-Die Termination, and it can reduce interference within the chip, thus guaranteeing the stability and reliability of DDR2 memory when working under high frequencies.

There are other features such as Posted CAS and Additive Latency, which work together to prevent data collisions and utilize the data bus more efficiently; and the Off-chip driver calibration (OCD), which increases signal integrity and system timing margin as well.

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History Of Computer Virus - Part 1

This Article was taken from http://www.cknow.com

Dr. Solomon: 1986-1987 - The Prologue

It all started in 1986. Basit and Amjad realised that the boot sector of a floppy diskette contained executable code, and this code is run whenever you start up the computer with a diskette in drive A. They realised that they could replace this code with their own program, that this could be a memory resident program, and that it could install a copy of itself on each floppy diskette that is accessed in any drive. The program copied itself; they called it a virus. But it only infected 360KB floppy disks.

In 1987, the University of Delaware realised that they had this virus, when they started seeing the label "(c) Brain" on floppy diskettes. That's all it did; copy itself, and put a volume label on diskettes.

Meanwhile, also in 1986, a programmer called Ralf Burger realised that a file could be made to copy itself, by attaching a copy of itself to other files. He wrote a demonstration of this effect, which he called VIRDEM. He distributed it at the Chaos Computer Club conference that December, where the theme was viruses. VIRDEM would infect any COM file; again the payload was pretty harmless.

This attracted so much interest, that he was asked to write a book. Ralf hadn't thought of boot sector viruses like Brain, so his book doesn't even mention them. But by then, someone had started spreading a virus, in Vienna.

In 1987, Franz Swoboda became aware that a virus was being spread in a program called Charlie. He called it the Charlie virus. He made lots of noise about the virus (and got badly bitten as a result). At this point, there are two versions of the story, Burger claims that he got a copy of this virus from Swoboda, but Swoboda denies this. In any case, Burger obtained a copy, and gave it to Berdt Fix, who disassembled it (this was the first time anyone had disassembled a virus). Burger included the disassembly in his book, after patching out a couple of areas to make it less infectious and changing the payload. The normal payload of Vienna is to cause one file in eight to reboot the computer (the virus patches the first five bytes of the code); Burger (or maybe Fix) replaced this reboot code with five spaces. The effect was that patched files hung the computer, instead of rebooting. This isn't really an improvement.

Meanwhile, in the US, Fred Cohen had completed his doctoral dissertation, which was on computer viruses. Dr Cohen proved that you cannot write a program that can, with 100% certainty, look at a file and decide whether it is a virus. Of course, no one ever thought that you could, but Cohen made good use of an existing mathematical theorem and earned a doctorate. He also did some experiments; he released a virus on a system, and discovered that it travelled further and faster than anyone had expected.

In 1987, Cohen was at Lehigh, as was Ken van Wyk. So was the author of the Lehigh virus. Lehigh was an extremely unsuccessful virus - it never managed to spread outside its home university, because it could only infect COMMAND.COM and did a lot of damage to its host after only four replications. One of the rules of the virus is that a virus that quickly damages it host, cannot survive. However, the Lehigh virus got a lot of publicity, and led to van Wyk setting up the Virus-L newsgroup on Usenet. Lehigh was nasty. After four replications, it did an overwrite on the disk, hitting most of the File Allocation Table. But a virus that only infects COMMAND.COM, isn't very infectious.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, Israel (some say in Italy), another programmer was experimenting. His first virus was called Suriv-01 (virus spelled backwards). It was a memory resident virus, but it could infect any COM file, whereas Lehigh could only infect COMMAND.COM. This is a much better infection strategy than the non-TSR strategy used by Vienna, as it leads to files on all drives and all directories being infected. His second virus was called Suriv-02, and that could infect only EXE files, but it was the first EXE infector in the world. His third attempt was called Suriv-03, and it could handle COM and EXE files. His fourth effort escaped into the world, and became known as the Jerusalem virus. Every Friday 13th, instead of infecting files that are run, it deletes them. But Friday 13ths are not common, so the virus is pretty inconspicuous, most of the time. It avoids infecting COMMAND.COM, because in those days, many people believed that this was the file to watch (see Lehigh).

It looks as if it escaped rather than was released, because it plainly was not ready for release. The author decided to change the way that the virus detected itself in EXE files, and had made part of that change. There is redundant code from the Suriv viruses still in place, and also what looks like debugging code. It was found in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (hence the name) by Yisrael Radai.

While all this was going on, a young student at the University of Wellington, New Zealand, had found a very simple way to create a very effective virus. One time in eight, when booting from an infected floppy, it also displayed the message 'Your PC is now Stoned', hence the name of the virus.

The virus itself was just a few hundred bytes long, but because of its self-restraint, and memory-resident replication, it has become the most widespread virus in the world, accounting for over a quarter of outbreaks. It is very unlikely that Stoned virus will ever become rare. The virus spread rapidly, because of its inconspicuousness (and because in those days, people were keeping a careful eye on COMMAND.COM, because of Lehigh).

In Italy, at the University of Turin, a programmer was writing another boot sector virus. This one put a bouncing ball up on the screen, if the disk was accessed exactly on the half hour. It became known as Italian virus, Ping Pong, or Bouncing Ball. But this virus had a major defect; it couldn't work on anything except an 8088 or 8086 computer, because it uses an instruction that doesn't work on more advanced chips. As a result, this virus has almost died out (as has Brain, which can only infect 360KB floppies, and which foolishly announces its presence via the volume label).

Back in the US, an American was demonstrating a problem that has continued to dog US virus writers ever since: incompetence. The Lehigh didn't make it outside a small circle; neither did the Yale virus. This was another boot sector virus, but it only copied itself when you booted from an infected floppy, then put another floppy in to continue the boot process. No subsequent diskette was infected, and if the boot-up continued from a hard disk, there was no infection at all. Yale never spread at all widely, either.

But also in 1987, a German programmer was writing a very competent virus, the Cascade, so called after the falling letters display that it gave. Cascade used a new idea - most of the virus was encrypted, leaving only a small stub of code in clear for decrypting the rest of the virus. The reason for this was not clear, but it certainly made it more difficult to repair infected files, and it restricted the choice of search string to the first couple of dozen bytes. This idea was later extended by Mark Washburn when he wrote the first polymorphic virus, 1260 (Chameleon). Washburn based Chameleon on a virus that he found in a book: the Vienna, published by Burger.

Cascade was supposed to look at the BIOS, and if it found an IBM copyright, it would refrain from infecting. This part of the code didn't work. The author soon released another version of the virus, 1704 bytes long instead of 1701, in order to correct this bug. But the corrected version had a bug that meant that it still didn't detect IBM BIOSes.

Of these early viruses, only Stoned, Cascade and Jerusalem are common today, but those three are very common.

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Re-Enabling Regedit

Sometimes, computer virus created protection so we can do several thing on our computer like opening Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del), Start Up Configuration (MsConfig), Registry Editor (Regedit), or even to do "run" or "find" in your own computer!!.

But i won't go to far now. I assumed you understand what Regedit is, and you have any idea what does regedit used for. Here i will explain how to manually open regedit which had been closed by viruses, so you can repair your windows from damage causes by virus. (someday, i will write full tutorial to repair damage because of computer virus :D).

Copy this text into notepad and save it as .vbs file

dim yonatan
masuk()
sub masuk()
set yonatan = wscript.CreateObject("wscript.shell")
keterangan = "Pilihan:" & vbcrlf &_
"[0].Enable Regedit." & vbcrlf &_
"[1].Disable Regedit." & vbcrlf & vbcrlf &_
"[Program Karya Bangsa Indonesia]"
tanya = inputbox(keterangan,"Edit Regedit",0)
yonatan.RegWrite"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion" &_
"\Policies\System\DisableRegistryTools",tanya,"REG_DWORD"
if tanya=1 then
msgbox "Registry Disabled",vbInformation,"Edit Regedit"
else if tanya=0 then
msgbox "Registry Enabled",vbInformation,"Edit Regedit"
yonatan.RegDelete"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion" &_
"\Policies\System\DisableRegistryTools"
else
msgbox "Enter 0 or 1!",vbInformation,"Edit Regedit"
masuk()
end if
end if
end sub

This tiny program was created by Indonesia people to help repair computer because of virus's attack. After created that file, just double click it and enter "0" or "1" to Enable or disable The Registry Editor.

That's it :D

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e-Surveiller, Spy Sofware

e-Surveiller 1.6.8 is a System Monitor, get 4 Stars SoftSea Rating, e-Surveiller is a user-activity monitoring, logging and real-time surveillance software, that enables you to monitor several computer users on standalone computers on a LAN or across the Internet. You can view the desktop in real-time, log keystrokes, chat conversations, applications, web sites and more. The user activity logs can be automatically transferred, emailed or uploaded to an FTP server of your choice. e-Surveiller automatically creates customized installer packages that can be distributed to the remote computers where they can run in stealth mode without user intervention. You can monitor up to 10 machines from the administrative interface and view the screen of any station with a single click (more stations can be licensed).

search e-Surveilance on Google:

During the installation, you will be asked for stealth setting. There are 3 option, first option would allow you to monitoring another computer in local network. Next is to monitoring your own computer, then the last is to do variety of monitoring task. Here i will explain how to monitoring another computer in a Local Area Network, so we have to choose the first option.

 

In "Generate New Monitor" (Action - Generate New Monitor) choose the first option (On a LAN). Then Press Next. You will be asked for how many computers do you wish to install the monitor. There are two option depend on what you need. You can choose "on one computer" or "on several computer". In this case, i choose "on several computer". Fill the indentifier, description and monitor filename, you will find out what they are later. Press Next.

Just Press next again when you asked for Other Option.

In Bulid Location, you will asked in which folder do you want the Monitor Installer to be placed. press Next then Finish. Then, you will find an new monitor installer on folder you set before. Copy that, and install it in computer which you want to monitoring.

Open your e-Surveiller Station. If you had installed monitor installer on target computer, soon your Surveiller Station will show you connected computer on "Connected Monitor" tab. (If you can't see anything on connected monitor, just press F2) Just Double Click which computer do you want to surveilance and ta-ta... you will see another computer desktop activity in your computer.

 

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Microsoft's BlueTrack Mouse

Microsoft had created new revolutionary wireless mouse which can use in almost all type of places including on granite countertops, carpet—even on a wood table or a rough, unfinished park bench. This is what i like, we can use it for our notebook everywhere.



Some features which Microsoft offers to this product are:

• BlueTrack™ Technology
  Microsoft BlueTrack Technology combines the power of optical with the precision of laser for remarkable tracking on more surfaces*.
• Works on Virtually Any Surface
  Allows your mouse to work on more surfaces—including granite, carpet, and rough-grain wood.
• Easy Recharging
  The battery status indicator tells you when a quick recharge is needed. The compact, stable recharging base is easy to use.
• Snap-in Mini Transceiver for Portability
  Reliable wireless on the go. Microsoft 2.4 GHz wireless and the snap-in minitransceiver deliver a reliable connection with up to a 30-foot range.
• Sophisticated Design and Ergonomic Comfort
  The glowing blue light effects and comfortable curved surfaces set your mouse apart.
• 2.4 GHz Wireless, 30 ft. Reliable Wireless Range
  Control your computer from wherever you are with long-range wireless freedom.
• 3 Weeks Between Charges
  The battery status indicator tells you when a quick recharge is needed, and the stable recharging base is easy to use.
• Better Than Optical and Laser
  Microsoft’s proprietary BlueTrack™ Technology works on more surfaces than both optical and laser mice
• Blue Lighting Effectc
  Glowing blue light effects are part of Explorer’s noticeable, sophisticated design.
• 4-Way Scrolling
  Scroll four ways for greater efficiency and comfort with Tilt Wheel Technology.
• Customizable Buttons
  Get quick access to the media, programs, and files you use most often with customizable buttons.
• Ergonomic Design
  Point and click in comfort—ergonomic design helps you work longer without discomfort.
• Designed for Notebook PCs
  Compact and comfortable, our handy notebook and laptop products are designed for convenience and mobility.
• Rechargeable Mouse
  Status indicator flashes when batteries need charging. Mouse drops onto the stable, horizontal charging station to activate charging.

once more, you wanna know how older mouse (optical mouse) work? click here


Try combine this product with a Product from SmartFish Pro, you will feel much comfort in your work. 

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AltDesk

If you like how Ubuntu manage your Desktop so you seem to have many desktop at once, which you can move between one desktop to another with just one click and each desktop have its own opened program depend on what did you open at each desktop, and you were sad why Windows doesn't have that cool desktop thing...

Find AltDesk Here..

Well, maybe you should try this program, "AltDesk". It creates several Virtual Desktops you can easily switch. Switching from an office application to your favorite Internet browser can be done in a blink of an eye without maximizing and minimizing numerous windows manually or switching them with the Taskbar. With AltDesk you can create as many Virtual Desktops as you want and switch them with ease. You don't even need to remember, where you've put a certain application's window as its icon is displayed by AltDesk. You can also easily swap tasks between Desktops, using Drag and Drop. And this is much more easiest way than use Windows Keyboard Shortcut

There are also so many setting in Preferences that you can use. General, set how does basic of program going to work. Interface, to set how many number of cells you wanted for your need in horizontal and also vertical, here you can also set window's transparency level. Skin Selection, of course to select costumize skin, you can download skin at their website. Virtual Desktop, set each virtual desktop of AltDek, here you can choose each virtual dekstop's HotKeys, so you don't even need a click to move from one desktop to another. There are also more setting which you can try it by your self :)

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HJ Split - Tiny Powerfull Program

This tiny program is used for splitting and joining splitted program or files, or anything in your computer (i didn't mean hardware -_-").HJ-Split, this program had created by freebyte.com. Although removable storage device is increasing into crazy capacity of saving files, this program sometimes still usefull, for "hidden messages/files". If you have a realy secret files (proof about your corruption :p) but you still want to keep it, use HJ-Split!!. Or you wanna send a veeeeeeery big files or program by e-mail, use HJ-Split, and it would be more easy.

This Program can split any size of file into any size you want with just a few click.

Search This Program on Web Here..

For example, i had games in 12.4 Mb, and i want to split its size into 4Mb each. So just open HJ-Split Program and Click "Split". At input file, choose your file or program you desire. then in "Split file size" just enter "4" and change from "Kbytes" into "Mbytes". then Click "Start" and HJ-Split will create copy of your splitted files at same folder with original file/program start with 001. It's Easy, isn't it?.

If you capture by Police due to your corruption case (haha) and The Police like very much to hit your face until you show up your corrupt evidence which you had splitted into pieces, then maybe it's the time to join it back.

Just click "Join" at HJ-Split, at "input file" choose your 001 files and HJ-Split will find the rest of your splitted files/program. Finnaly, Click start. The output files will become files.extension.joined (like "data.doc.joined" or "corel.exe.joined") just rename and erase ".joined" and The Police will stop hitting your face.

Bravo!!

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Delete Startup List with RegCleaner

This old program called RegCleaner, this was made and developed by Jouni Vuorio from 1999 until 2001 (quite old enough). Actually, this program is another thing from what we know as REGEDIT. Yes, Jouni Vuorio had find a nice way to make REGEDIT become more simple and attractive. Of course this program just can do several thing, not as much as what REGEDIT can do, but this is still better than try to find something which you want to delete or add in registry such as startup and other things.

Find RegCleaner here:

Now, If you want to delete a startup list more easier than using "msconfig", you can use this program. Go to Start Up tab, you will find your computer start up list there. Just give a mark to program(s) which you want to remove from startup list, and Remove Selected. You don't need to restart your windows and you get what you want.


This Program is also usefull when you are under attack by a virus to delete the viruses start up which you can't do it in MsConfig due to virus blocking. You can also delete some Windows start up services that you think you don't need that.



You can restore what had you remove by going to "backups" tab and restore your back up. Easy and simple right?

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Disable Copying to Flash Drive

Maybe you wondering how to make your files in your computer so it cannot be copy or move to Flash Disk? (in another case, you want to protect your data from getting copying by your enemies). Well, there is an answer for that.

By using REGEDIT (Registry Editor), you can do whatever you want with your windows (make sure you know what are you doing), also how to make your data cannot be copy or move to all flash disk.

Just go to “run” and then type “regedit” there, then find “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
\StorageDevicePolicies”.


If you can’t find it, create it!!. At “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\” click “Edit” -> “New” -> “Key”, and give name it with “StorageDevicePolicies”



After that, Create another DWORD value same as how you create new Key, only this time you choose DWORD, not Key. Give name it with “WriteProtect”, double click it, at Value data enter 1.



That’s it. Restart your explorer.exe (you can find how to restart explorer.exe in another tutorial)

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3D Space Vest - Gaming Vest

Every game which plays in console  (just like Nitendo Wii, XboX, PS3) or computer is getting better from time to time. They created game as posible as same with reality, from person view, shaking, until blood. Not just game it self, controller and game equipment has modified and created creatively until we can enjoy and feel like we realy doing what is in the game.

And if you are a real gamer, maybe you should try this gaming vest. This vest will make your game become so real. you will feel shooted, running, shaking, moving, just exactly the same with what just happen in that game. But don't think you will realy like you had been shooted if you use this vest, this is just for fun.

I was wondering if i played game and there was a dog bites me, how was that would feel, is this vest can show how was it feel? :p

there are 20 games which compatible with this gaming vest, like Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Mass Effect

This vest will have more taste if you also had a nice and comfortable keyboard like SmartFish Pro Keyboard and mouse like what it called with Blue Track Mouse

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Disk Checkup

PassMark DiskCheckup™ allows the user to monitor the SMART attributes of a particular hard disk drive. SMART ( Self Monitoring Analysis & Reporting Technology ) is an interface between a computer's BIOS (basic input/output system) and the computer hard disk. It is a feature of the Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE) technology that controls access to the hard drive. If S.M.A.R.T is enabled when a computer is set up, the BIOS can receive analytical information from the hard drive and determine whether to send the user a warning message about possible future failure of the hard drive.

SMART monitors elements of possible long term drive failure, such as 'Spin Up Time', the number of start/stops, the number of hours powered on and the hard disk temperature.

Search PassMark Disk Checkup Here:

DiskCheckup displays the current values of the SMART attributes, along with the Threshold value for that attribute. If any attribute value is close to or below the threshold, the drive is no longer reliable and should be replaced.

Note that SMART attributes change slowly over time and are helpful attempts to diagnose the life span of a particular drive. DiskCheckup monitors these changes over a long period and predict the date (if available) of the Threshold Exceed Condition (TEC), which is displayed on the main window.

DiskCheckup also displays some additional drive information, such as the drive serial number, model number, firmware version, device capacity, partition capacities, the number of cylinders, tracks, the sectors per track, etc...

E-mail notification when Threshold Exceed Condition detected

DiskCheckup can be configured to perform e-mail notification when a SMART attribute has been detected to be less than the allowable threshold value. Such threshold values are determined by the hard disk manufacturer. For a drive to be considered "good", all the SMART attributes must be above these values. Different SMART attributes have different threshold values.

System requirements

A hard drive and BIOS that supports SMART, plus compatible drivers. Most recent hard drives are OK but drives connected via SCSI or hardware RAID will not work. But drives connected via SATA (serial ATA) are supported. Drives configured as software RAID (dynamic disks) via Windows Disk Management will also work.

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Buffalo - 4 Terabyte Storage

If your need to storrage device is overload, maybe you can start to think this product. One of NAS (NetWork Area Storage) product called "BUFFALO" is the great sollution to combine your harddisk up to 4 terabyte. (Wow, that's will save a thousand movies on your computer :p ).




More than that, buffalo can access your music, photo and video straightly without having connected to your computer, just like bring your own ipod. This product also can be use to sharing with BitTorrent services.

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Put Your Name Besides Time Indicator

Sometimes, it’s a wonderfull proud when your computer become different from other. :p. Now, I will teach you one of proud that you can show up your name beside the time indicator in task bar.

              

First, go to Registry by typing regedit in “Start – Run”. If you cannot open your registry, maybe it's blocked by virus. To re-enabling your registry, click here.

Then Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\

Look inside international folder, Scroll down until you find “sTimeFormat” key at the bottom of list. This key is used to format how your time will show up.

 

Now, Double click it, and a pop up editing windows will come. Just type your name after “tt”, then press ok. After that, close regedit editor.

Next, restart your explorer. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del (Task Manager) at the same time. At “Process” tab, find list named “explorer” and End it. Your icon, start menu and everything will gone, there will be just desktop and this task manager. Press File and “New Task (Run…)”  then type explorer, and press enter. Ta-da!! Your name has already there!!

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