An Overview of Computer Viruses in a Research Environment
Matt Bishop · NASA STI Repository (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) · 1991
The threat of attack by computer viruses is in reality a very small part of a much more general threat, specifically attacks aimed at subverting computer security. This paper examines computer viruses as malicious logic in a research and development environment, relates them to various models of security and integrity, and examines current research techniques aimed at controlling the threats viruses in particular, and malicious logic in general, pose to computer systems. Finally, a brief examination of the vulnerabilities of research and development systems that malicious logic and computer viruses may exploit is undertaken. 1. Introduction A computer virus is a sequence of instructions that copies itself into other programs in such a way that executing the program also executes that sequence of instructions. Rarely has something seemingly so esoteric captured the imagination of so many people; magazines from Business Week to the New England Journal of Medicine [39][48][60][72][135]...