The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

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ever, the language of biology quickly became a provocative tool for
describing these encapsulations of code. Science fiction classics such
as John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider popularized the vitalism of
computer viruses, and by the early 1980s, researchers such as Fred
Cohen published articles on “computer viruses” in academic journals
such as Computers and Security. 62
In terms of understanding networks, one of the greatest lessons of computer
viruses and their cousins (Internet worms, Trojan horses) is that, like
biological viruses, they exploit the normal functioning of their host systems
to produce more copies of themselves. Viruses are life exploiting life.
Standard computer viruses essentially do three things: they “infect”
documents or a program by overwriting, replacing, or editing code;
they use the host system to create copies and to distribute copies
of themselves; and they may have one or more tactics for evading
detection by users or antivirus programs.
Contrary to popular opinion, not all computer viruses are destructive
(the same can be said in biology, as well). Certainly computer
viruses can delete data, but they can also be performative (e.g., demonstrating
a security violation), exploratory (e.g., gaining access), or
based on disturbance rather than destruction (e.g., rerouting network
traffic, clogging network bandwidth). Originally computer viruses
operated in one computer system at a time and required external media
such as a floppy disk to pass from computer to computer. The
increasing popularity of the civilian Internet, and later the Web,
made possible network - based, self - replicating computer viruses (or
“worms”). For instance, in January 2003, the “Sobig.F” virus, which
used e - mail address books, generated an estimated one hundred million
“fake” e - mails (which amounted to one in seventeen e - mails
being infected in a given day). That same year, the “Blaster” virus
rapidly spread through the Internet, infecting some four hundred
thousand operating systems—all running Microsoft Windows. An
attempt was made to release an automated anti - Blaster “vaccine”
called “Naachi”; but the attempt failed, as the purported fix clogged
networks with downloads of the Blaster patch from the Microsoft
Web site (temporarily disabling a portion of the Air Canada and the