From the course: Ethical Hacking: The Complete Malware Analysis Process

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The evolution of malware

The evolution of malware

From the course: Ethical Hacking: The Complete Malware Analysis Process

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The evolution of malware

- [Instructor] Robert Morris was one of the earliest hackers to be convicted because of malware he developed. In 1988 he released the Christmas Tree worm onto the Internet. Within a day 2,000 systems were infected and in total it caused over 6,000 computers to crash. Morris was charged and fined $10,000, rather a lot in those days. Morris had released the malware as a prank, and as a demonstration of his skills at extreme programming. The worm infected DEC and Sun Systems and introduced some early malware coding techniques. It contained what was known as a portable C grappling hook, which was used to download the main payload and also to move across to other operating systems. It didn't take long for the emergence of malicious hackers, often youngsters with too much time on their hands who created malware which was deliberately intended to cause disruption and damage systems. By the late 1990s malware was being released onto the Internet regularly, fueled by connected systems such as…

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