Network Defense and Countermeasures by Easttom Chuck

Author:Easttom, Chuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pearson Education Limited (US titles)
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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There are a number of theories about why Microsoft Outlook is so frequently struck with virus attacks. One explanation is its prevalence in the marketplace. Virus writers wish to cause havoc. The best way to do that is to target the most commonly used systems.

Another reason that Outlook is so often targeted is that writing viruses for it is relatively easy. We previously mentioned the fact that many e-mail applications allow programmers to create extensions to the application. All Microsoft Office products are made so that a legitimate programmer who is writing software for a business can access many of the application’s internal objects and thereby easily create applications that integrate the applications within the Microsoft Office suite. For example, a programmer could write an application that would access a Word document, import an Excel spreadsheet, and then use Outlook to automatically e-mail the resulting document to interested parties. Microsoft has done a good job of making this process very easy, for it usually takes a minimum amount of programming to accomplish these tasks. Using Outlook, it takes less than five lines of code to reference Outlook and send out an e-mail. This means a program can literally cause Outlook itself to send e-mail, unbeknownst to the user. There are numerous code examples on the Internet that show exactly how to do this, free for the taking. For this reason, it does not take a very skilled programmer to be able to access your Outlook address book and automatically send e-mail. Essentially, the ease of programming Outlook is why there are so many virus attacks that target Outlook.

While the overwhelming majority of virus attacks spread by attaching themselves to the victim’s existing e-mail software, some recent virus outbreaks have used other methods for propagation. One method that is becoming more common is for viruses to have their own internal e-mail engine. A virus that has its own e-mail engine does not need to “piggy-back” off of the machine’s e-mail software. This means that, regardless of what e-mail software you use, this virus can still propagate from your machine. Another virus propagation method is to simply copy itself across a network. Virus outbreaks that spread via multiple routes are becoming more common.

Another way a virus can spread is by examining the affected system looking for any connected computers and copying itself to them. This sort of self-propagation does not require user interaction, so the program that uses this method to infect a system is classified as a worm.

Regardless of the way a virus arrives at your doorstep, once it is on your system, it will attempt to spread and, in many cases, will also attempt to cause some harm to your system. Once a virus is on your system, it can do anything that any legitimate program can do. That means it could potentially delete files, change system settings, or cause other harm. The threat from virus attacks cannot be overstated. Some recent virus outbreaks even went so far as to disable existing security software, such as antivirus scanners and firewalls.

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