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.[1]
Although the roots of the computer virus date back as early as 1949, when the Hungarian scientist John von Neumann published the "Theory of self-reproducing automata",[2] the first known computer virus appeared in 1971 and was dubbed the "Creeper virus".[3] This computer virus infected Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) PDP-10 mainframe computers running the TENEX operating system.[4][5]
In 1983, the term "computer virus" was coined by Fred Cohen in one of the first ever published academic papers on computer viruses.[11] 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 (possibly evolved) copy of itself."[12] (note that a more recent definition of computer virus has been given by the Hungarian security researcher Pter Szőr: "a code that recursively replicates a possibly evolved copy of itself").[13][14]
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.[15][16] 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.[17]
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.[18]
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 (i.e. the "Vienna virus") was performed by Bernd Fix in 1987.[19][20]
In 1987, Andreas Lning and Kai Figge, who founded G Data Software in 1985, released their first antivirus product for the Atari ST platform.[21] In 1987, the Ultimate Virus Killer (UVK) was also released.[22] This was the de facto industry standard virus killer for the Atari ST and Atari Falcon, the last version of which (version 9.0) was released in April 2004.[citation needed] In 1987, in the United States, John McAfee founded the McAfee company (was part of Intel Security[23]) and, at the end of that year, he released the first version of VirusScan.[24] Also in 1987 (in Czechoslovakia), Peter Paško, Rudolf Hrub, and Miroslav Trnka created the first version of NOD antivirus.[25][26]
Finally, at the end of 1987, the first two heuristic antivirus utilities were released: Flushot Plus by Ross Greenberg[28][29][30] and Anti4us by Erwin Lanting.[31] 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 (MMC)."[32]
Also in 1988, a mailing list named VIRUS-L[35] 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 (Kaspersky Lab), Fririk Sklason (FRISK Software), John McAfee (McAfee), Luis Corrons (Panda Security), Mikko Hyppnen (F-Secure), Pter Szőr, Tjark Auerbach (Avira) and Vesselin Bontchev (FRISK Software).[35]
In 1989, in Iceland, Fririk Sklason created the first version of F-PROT Anti-Virus (he founded FRISK Software only in 1993). Meanwhile, in the United States, Symantec (founded by Gary Hendrix in 1982) launched its first Symantec antivirus for Macintosh (SAM).[36][37] 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.[38]
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, also VirusBuster was founded (which has recently being incorporated by Sophos).
In 1990, in Spain, Mikel Urizarbarrena founded Panda Security (Panda Software at the time).[39] In Hungary, the security researcher Pter Szőr released the first version of Pasteur antivirus. In Italy, Gianfranco Tonello created the first version of VirIT eXplorer antivirus, then founded TG Soft one year later.[40]
In 1990, the Computer Antivirus Research Organization (CARO) was founded. In 1991, CARO released the "Virus Naming Scheme", originally written by Fririk Sklason and Vesselin Bontchev.[41] 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, Fririk Sklason, Igor Muttik, Mikko Hyppnen, Morton Swimmer, Nick FitzGerald, Padgett Peterson, Peter Ferrie, Righard Zwienenberg and Vesselin Bontchev.[42][43]
Over time other companies were founded. In 1996, in Romania, Bitdefender was founded and released the first version of Anti-Virus eXpert (AVX).[49] In 1997, in Russia, Eugene Kaspersky and Natalya Kaspersky co-founded security firm Kaspersky Lab.[50]
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,[53] which in turn was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2013.[54]
In 2007, AV-TEST reported a number of 5,490,960 new unique malware samples (based on MD5) only for that year.[48] In 2012 and 2013, antivirus firms reported a new malware samples range from 300,000 to over 500,000 per day.[56][57]
Over the years it has become necessary for antivirus software to use several different strategies (e.g. specific email and network protection or low level modules) and detection algorithms, as well as to check an increasing variety of files, rather than just executables, for several reasons:
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[62] and officially unveiled in August 2008 in McAfee VirusScan.[63]
Following the 2013 release of the APT 1 report from Mandiant, the industry has seen a shift towards signature-less approaches to the problem capable of detecting and mitigating zero-day attacks.[66] Numerous approaches to address these new forms of threats have appeared, including behavioral detection, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud-based file detonation. According to Gartner, it is expected the rise of new entrants, such Carbon Black, Cylance and Crowdstrike will force EPP incumbents into a new phase of innovation and acquisition.[67] One method from Bromium involves micro-virtualization to protect desktops from malicious code execution initiated by the end user. Another approach from SentinelOne and Carbon Black focuses on behavioral detection by building a full context around every process execution path in real time,[68][69] while Cylance leverages an artificial intelligence model based on machine learning.[70] Increasingly, these signature-less approaches have been defined by the media and analyst firms as "next-generation" antivirus[71] and are seeing rapid market adoption as certified antivirus replacement technologies by firms such as Coalfire and DirectDefense.[72] In response, traditional antivirus vendors such as Trend Micro,[73] Symantec and Sophos[74] have responded by incorporating "next-gen" offerings into their portfolios as analyst firms such as Forrester and Gartner have called traditional signature-based antivirus "ineffective" and "outdated".[75]
As of Windows 8, Windows includes its own free antivirus protection under the Windows Defender brand. Despite bad detection scores in its early days, AV-Test now certifies Defender as one of its top products.[76][77] While it isn't publicly known how the inclusion of antivirus software in Windows affected antivirus sales, Google search traffic for antivirus has declined significantly since 2010.[78]
Since 2016, there has been a notable amount of consolidation in the industry. Avast purchased AVG in 2016 for $1.3 billion.[79] Avira was acquired by Norton owner Gen Digital (then NortonLifeLock) in 2020 for $360 million.[80] In 2021, the Avira division of Gen Digital acquired BullGuard.[81] The BullGuard brand was discontinued in 2022 and its customers were migrated to Norton. In 2022, Gen Digital acquired Avast, effectively consolidating four major antivirus brands under one owner.[82]
In 1987, Frederick B. Cohen demonstrated that the algorithm which would be able to detect all possible viruses can't possibly exist (like the algorithm which determines whether or not the given program halts).[27] However, using different layers of defense, a good detection rate may be achieved.
Substantially, when a malware sample arrives in the hands of an antivirus firm, it is analysed by malware researchers or by dynamic analysis systems. Then, once it is determined to be a malware, a proper signature of the file is extracted and added to the signatures database of the antivirus software.[101]
Although the signature-based approach can effectively contain malware outbreaks, malware authors have tried to stay a step ahead of such software by writing "oligomorphic", "polymorphic" and, more recently, "metamorphic" viruses, which encrypt parts of themselves or otherwise modify themselves as a method of disguise, so as to not match virus signatures in the dictionary.[102]
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