Know some interesting unknows facts

Did You Know?

2007-02-01T12:45:00.000+05:30

No piece of normal-size paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
The first product to have a bar code scanned was Wrigley's gum.
Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
The Himalayan gogi berry contains, weight for weight, more iron than steak, more beta carotene than carrots, more vitamin C than oranges.

Fingerprints of koala bears are similar (in pattern, shape and size) to the fingerprints of humans
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
Pele has always hated his nickname, which he says sounds like "baby-talk in Portuguese".
As of 2006, 200 million blogs were left without updates
Urban birds have developed a short, fast "rap style" of singing, different from their rural counterparts.
The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
Fathers tend to determine the height of their child, mothers their weight.
The Pope's been known to wear red Prada shoes.
Donald Rumsfeld was both the youngest and the oldest defense secretary in US history.
Coco Chanel started the trend for sun tans in 1923 when she got accidentally burnt on a cruise.
Up to 25% of hospital keyboards carry the MRSA infection.
Sex workers (Prostitutes) in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.
As of 2006, more than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet.
More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors.
The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom.
Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.
Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to drinking five liters of cooking oil a year.
Plant seeds that have been stored for more than 200 years can be coaxed into new life.
For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. (As of 2006)
Watching television can act as a natural painkiller for children
Forty-one percent of English women have punched or kicked their partners, according to a study.
The more panels a football has - and therefore the more seams - the easier it is to control in the air.
Music can help reduce chronic pain by more than 20% and can alleviate depression by up to 25%.
The egg came first.
Modern teenagers are better behaved than their counterparts of 20 years ago, showing "less problematic behavior" involving sex, drugs and drink.
Britain is still paying off debts that predate the Napoleonic wars because it's cheaper to do so than buy back the bonds on which they are based.
In Bhutan government policy is based on Gross National Happiness; thus most street advertising is banned, as are tobacco and plastic bags.
The best-value consumer purchase in terms of the price and usage is an electric kettle.
Camel's milk, which is widely drunk in Arab countries, has 10 times more iron than cow's milk.
Iceland has the highest concentration of broadband users in the world.
The age limit for marriage in France was, until recently, 15 for girls, but 18 for boys. The age for girls was raised to 18 in 2006.
The brain is soft and gelatinous - its consistency is something between jelly and cooked pasta.
The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.
A "lost world" exists in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of hitherto unknown animal and plant species.
The two most famous actors who portrayed the “Marlboro Man” in the cigarette ads died of lung cancer.
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
The inventor of the flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.
The average bed is home to over 6 billion dust mites.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
The average chocolate bar has 8 insect legs in it.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. (Makes you think about ambidextrous people)
Its impossible to smoke oneself to death with weed. You won\'t be able to retain enough motor control and consciousness to do so after such a large amount.
Every drop of seawater contains approximately 1 billion gold atoms.
The US national anthem actually has three verses, but everyone just knows the first one.
During World War II, IBM built the computers the Nazis used to manage their death/concentration camps.
The total combined weight of the worlds ant population is heavier than the weight of the human population.
The deadliest war in history excluding World War II was a civil war in China in the 1850s in which the rebels were led by a man who thought he was the brother of Jesus Christ.
Just about 3 people are born every second, and about 1.3333 people die every second. The result is about a 2 and 2/3 net increase of people every second. Almost 10 people more live on this Earth now, than before you finished reading this.
Happy Birthday (the song) is copyrighted.
The number of people alive on earth right now is higher than the number of all the people that have died. Ever.
The average American consumes 1.2 pounds of spider eggs a year and eat 2.5 pounds of insect parts a year.
Men can breastfeed babies
There is a rare condition called Exploding Head Syndrome which you have probably never heard of.
Scientists have determined that fungi are more closely related to human beings and animals than to other plants.
In some (maybe all) Asian countries, the family name is written
first and the individual name written second
Abe Lincoln bought 50 cents worth of cocaine in 1860
A German World War II submarine was sunk due to malfunction of the toilet.
Washington State has the longest single beach in the United States.Long Beach, WA
The largest living thing on the face of the Earth is a mushroom underground in Oregon, it measures three and a half miles in diameter.
The town of Los Angeles, California, was originally named "El Pueblo la Nuestra Senora de Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula"
9 out of 10 people believe Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.This isn't true; Joseph Swan did.
Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
The Population of the world can live within the state boundaries of Texas.
Plastic lawn flamingos outnumber real flamingos in the U.S.A.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."
Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is not considered an insult! Despite the expensive food, tipping is welcome as in any other country.
Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than caffeine.
The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
The largest cabbage weighed 144 pounds.
Pinocchio was made of pine.
Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button for it was eliminated during surgery.
A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
Cranberry Jell-0 is the only kind that contains real fruit.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
New Jersey has a spoon museum with over 5,400 spoons from almost all the states.
There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."
The parking meter was invented in North Dakota.
Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox.
Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
The green stuff on the occasional freak potato chip is chlorophyll.
Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first.
There are 333 toilet paper squares on a toilet paper roll.
The Eiffel Tower has 2,500,000 rivets in it.
"Jaws" is the most common name for a goldfish.
On an average work day, a typist's fingers travel 12.6 miles.
Every minute in the U.S. six people turn 17.
2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for rightists.
Ten tons of space dust falls on the Earth every day.
On average, a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.
Blue and white are the most common school colors.
Swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona, pick up 20 pounds of dust a year.
In a normal lifetime an American will eat 200 pounds of peanuts and 10,000 pounds of meat.
A new book is published every 13 minutes in America.
America's best selling ice cream flavor is vanilla.
Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.
Because of Animal Crackers, many kids until they reach the age of ten, believe a bear is as tall as a giraffe.
The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of 4 miles per hour.
The bulls-eye on a dartboard must be 5 feet 8 inches off the ground.
The doorbell was invented in 1831.
The electric shaver was patented on November 6, 1928.
Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.
There are seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown.
Napoleon was terrified of cats.
The first Lifesaver flavor was peppermint.
The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.
The parking meter was invented by C.C. Magee in 1935.
The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
Jack is the most common name in nursery rhymes.
The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.
The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.
France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.
The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is "feedback."
The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.
George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
Iceland was the first country to legalize abortion in 1935.
The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.
Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturday.
The Eiffel Tower has 1792 steps.
The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.
Goldfish swallowing started at Harvard in 1939.
Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.
The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used.
Toilet paper was invented in 1857.
Alaska could hold the 21 smallest States.
Before Prohibition, Schlitz Brewery owned more property in Chicago than anyone else, except the Catholic church.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Kermit the Frog is left-handed.
Nondairy creamer is flammable.
The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Hupmobile.
If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0.
The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.
The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is Number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
The pet ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
The most common speed limit sign in the United States is 25 m.p.h.
At any one time, there are 100 million phone conversations going on in the United States.
The world's record for continuous pogo stick jumping is 41 hours.
The Ottoman Empire once had seven emperors in seven months. They died of (in order): burning, choking, drowning, stabbing, heart failure, poisoning and being thrown from a horse.
You can make edible cheese from the milk of 24 different mammals.
Sir Isaac Newton, who invented Calculus, had trouble with names to the point where he would forget his brothers' names.
In medieval Thailand, they had moveable type printing presses. The type was made from baked oxen dung.
By law, employees do not have to wash hands after sneezing.
The average American consumes enough caffeine in one year to kill a horse.
More American workers (18%) call sick on Friday than any other day of the week. Tuesday has the lowest percent of absenteeism (11%).
Enough beer is poured every Saturday across America to fill the Orange Bowl.
A newborn expels its own body weight in waste every 60 hours.
Whales die if their echo system fails.
Florida's beaches lose 20 million cubic yards of sand annually.
Naturalists use marshmallows to lure alligators out of swamps.
It takes a ton of water to make a pound of refined sugar.
Weevils are more resistant to poisons in the morning than at night.
Cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate is the most pest-ridden tree in the jungle.
In deep space most lubricants will disappear.
America once issued a 5-cent bill.
The average person can live 11 days without water.
In 1221 Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at Nishapur in one hour.
There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.
In 1800 on 50 cities on earth had a population of more than 100,000.
More steel in the US is used to make bottle caps than to manufacture automobile bodies.
It is possible for any American citizen to give whatever name he or she chooses to any unnamed mountain or hill in the United States.
King Henry III of France, Louis XVI of France and Napoleon all suffered from ailurophobia--fear of cats.
Before 1850 golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers.
Clocks made before 1687 had only one hand, and hour hand.
The motto of the American people, "In God We Trust," was not adopted as the national slogan until 1956.
More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have died in all the wars ever fought by the United States.
The ampersand (&) was once a letter of the English alphabet.
The principality of Monaco consists of 370 acres.
There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters (I was thankfully corrected by a friend: The Hawai'ian alphabet has 13 letters, A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W, ' (which is called an okina).
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.

The amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.
City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong.
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.
Percentage of Africa that is wilderness--28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness--38%.
Average number of days a German goes without washing his underwear: 7.
Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80%.
Percentage of American women who say they'd marry the same man: 50%.
Cost of raising a medium size dog to the age of 11: $6,400.
Average people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
Average lifespan of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
The only President to win a Pulitzer Prize: John Kennedy for "Profiles in Courage."
The youngest Pope was 11 years old.
Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: "Tom Sawyer."
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. (This was challenged and proved wrong by the TV show "Mythbusters")
The main library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades--King David, Clubs--Alexander the Great, Hearts--Charlemagne and Diamonds--Julius Caesar.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one leg front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all 4 legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. The last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are useable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
The first airline, DELAG, was established on October 16, 1909, to carry passengers between German cities by Zeppelin airships. Up to November 1913, more than 34,000 people had used the service.
Titanic was running at 22 knots when she hit the iceberg
The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; '7' was selected because the original containers were 7 ounces. 'UP' indicated the direction of the bubbles
Francis Scott Key was a young lawyer who wrote the poem, 'The Star Spangled Banner', after being inspired by watching the Americans fight off the British attack of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The poem became the words to the national anthem
Because radio waves travel at 186,000 miles per second and sound waves saunter at 700 miles per hour, a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 13,000 miles away than it can be heard at the back of the room in which it originated
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know your there
The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep
Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver in 1836.
It has been recommended by dentists that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet (two meters) away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush!
In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose
It is possible to drown and not die. Technically the term 'drowning' refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.
The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common foxglove plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of b lood pumped per heartbeat.
Dry cereal for breakfast was invented by John Henry Kellogg at the turn of the century
During World War II, a German U-boat was sunk by a truck. The U-boat in question attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then rose to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back
Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher who died in 1832,left his entire estate to the London Hospital provided that his body be allowed to preside over its board meetings. His skeleton was clothed and fitted with a wax mask of his face. It was present at the meeting for 92 years.
Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.
Methane gas can often be seen bubbling up from the bottom of ponds. It is produced by the decomposition of dead plants and animals in the mud.
There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James translation of the Bible.
The E. Coli bacterium propels itself with a 'motor' only one-millionth of an inch in diameter, a thousand times smaller than the tiniest motors built to date by man. The rotation of the bacterial motor comes from a current of protons. The efficiency of the motor approaches 100 per cent.
Henry Ford produced the model T only in black because the black paint available at the time was the fastest to dry.
At - 40 degrees Centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by breathing.
Pet superstores now sell about 40 percent of all pet food
One million Americans, about 3,000 each day, take up smoking each year. Most of them are children.
In 1933, Mickey Mouse, an animated cartoon character, received 800,000 fan letters.
There are only four words in the English language which end in '-dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
If you attempted to count to stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.
Less than 3% of Nestlé's sales are for chocolate.
The average person will spend two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change
More than 2500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed products
It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7% of the world's population are drunk
The tip of a 1/3 inch long hour-hand on a wristwatch travels at 0.00000275 mph
Less than one per cent of the 500 Chinese cities have clean air, respiratory disease is China's leading cause of death.
The number of cars on the planet is increasing three times faster than the population growth
The X's that people sometimes put at the end of letters or notes to mean a kiss, actually started back in the 1000's when Lords would sign their names at the end of documents to other important people. It was originally a cross that they would kiss after signing to signify that they were faithful to God and their King. Over the years though, it slanted into the X
Nova Scotia is Latin for 'New Scotland.'
The term Cop comes from Constable on Patrol. It's from England.
The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.
Even though it is widely attributed to him Shakespeare never actually used the word 'gadzooks'.
Only 2 blue moons (the saying 'only once in a blue moon ' refers to the occurrence of two full moons during one calendar month) are to occur between now and 2001. Those times are January 1999 and March 1999
"Naked" means to be unprotected. "Nude" means unclothed
Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower', because in the time when al original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case stored smaller, 'lower case' letters
In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.'

I highly recommend visiting his Joey's site :-)

BOUNCE...the stuff you use in your dryer:

IT............. Repels mosquitoes. Tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito season.
Eliminates static electricity from your television screen.
Since Bounce is designed to help eliminate static cling, wipe your television screen with a used sheet of Bounce to keep dust from resettling.
Dissolves soap scum from shower doors. Clean with a used sheet of Bounce.
Freshens the air in your home. Place an individual sheet of Bounce in a drawer or hang one in the closet.
Prevents thread from tangling. Run a threaded needle through a sheet of Bounce to eliminate the static cling on the thread before sewing.
Eliminates static cling from pantyhose. Rub a damp, used sheet of Bounce over the hose.
Prevents musty suitcases. Place an individual sheet of Bounce inside empty luggage before storing.
Freshens the air in your car. Place a sheet of Bounce under the front sea
Cleans baked-on food from a cooking pan. Put a sheet in the pan, fill with water, let sit overnight and sponge clean. The anti-static agents apparently weaken the bond between the food and the pan while the fabric softening agents soften the baked-on food.
Place a sheet of Bounce at the bottom of the wastebasket. Collects cat hair. Rubbing the area with a sheet of Bounce will magnetically attract all the loose hairs.
Wipe the blinds with a sheet of Bounce to prevent dust from resettling.
Wipes up sawdust from drilling or sandpapering. A used sheet of Bounce will collect sawdust like a tack cloth.
Eliminates odors in dirty laundry. Place an individual sheet of Bounce at the bottom of a laundry bag or hamper
Deodorizes shoes or sneakers. Place a sheet of Bounce in your shoes or sneakers overnight so they'll smell great in the morning.

COCA COLA

Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl, Let the "real thing"sit for one hour, then flush clean
The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china.
To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca Cola.
To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.
To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes.
To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of Coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains.
It will also clean road haze from your windshield.

Lincoln and Kennedy

Here's a little part of US history which makes you go h-m-m-m:
Have a history teacher explain this if they can?

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.
Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born! ! in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Kennedy.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln.'
Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
And here's the kicker...
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Interesting Fact about the Pope John Paul II death

Pope was living 85 years - sum of those numbers = 13

Pope died on 2.04.2005 - sum of those numbers = 13

Pope died at 21.37 - again - sum is equal.... 13

13...that's Maria's number - only that time Holy Mother was showing herself to 3 children in Fatima

on 13th May 1981 - Pope was wounded and that time was saved by Holy Mother

on 13th Pope went to the hospital for the first time

on 13th died the last child of three from Fatima to whom Holy Mother showed up

Pope died on 02.04.2005 at 21.37.. add all those numbers....

2+4+2+5 = 13

2+1+3+7 = 13

13+13=26

26 years of pontificate......

Coincidence? or it had to be like this?

in the end......he died in 13th week of the year...and when you multiply the time of his death 21 x 37...you will have 777

Pope was living exactly 31 thousands days...if you reverse

figures...you will get again 13!!!

World Cup

Brazil last won the world cup in 1994. Before that they won it in 1970. Add 1970 and 1994, it equals 3964.

Germany last won in 1990. Before that they won in 1974. Add 1990 and 1974, it equals 3964.

Argentina last won the world cup in 1986. Before that they won it in 1978. Add 1978 and 1986, it equals 3964.

So going by this logic, The winner of the 2002 world cup is the same as the 3964 - 2002 = 1962 world cup. The 1962 world cup was won by Brazil. It was really Brazil who won!!!

Importance of Drinking Enough Water

75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is
often mistaken for hunger.
Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as much as 3%.
One glass of water shuts down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a U-Washington study.
Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.
Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.
A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen.
Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.

Here is a list of what I thought very funny. I left it in the form that I received it.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.(Hardly seems worth it.)
If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. (Now that's more like it!)
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body
to squirt blood 30 feet. (O.M.G.!)
A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes. (In my next life, I want to be a pig.)
A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. (Creepy.) (I'm still not over the pig.)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour. (Do not try this at home...... maybe at work.)
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off. ("Honey, I'm home. What the....?!")
- A mantis breeder has assured me that you preying mantis can copulate with the male's head still attached, even several times.
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. For a human, that would be equivalent to jumping the length of a football field. (30 minutes...lucky pig... can you imagine??)
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)
Some lions mate over 50 times a day. (I still want to be a pig in my next life...quality over quantity)
Butterflies taste with their feet. (Something I always wanted to know.)
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. (Hmmmmmm........won't go there.)
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people. (If you're ambidextrous, do you split the difference?)
Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump. (OK, so that would be a good thing....)
A cat's urine glows under a black light. (I wonder who was paid to figure that out.)
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. (I know some people like that.)
Starfish have no brains. (I know some people like that too.)
Polar bears are left-handed. (If they switch, they'll live a lot longer.)
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. (What about that pig??)

• Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
• The 'You are here' arrow on a map is called the IDEO locator.
• MTV first aired at 12:01 AM on August 1, 1981. The first video was 'Video Killed the Radio Star' by the Bugles.
• There are more than 1,00 chemicals in a cup of coffee.
• There are only four words in the English language which end in '-dous':tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous .
• The number of cars on the planet is increasing three times faster than the population growth

• At - 40 degrees Centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by breathing.
• Pearls melt in vinegar.
• A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.
• Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
• There is about 200 times more gold in the worlds oceans, than has been mined in our entire history.
• Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
• Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
• The cockroach has a high resistance to radiation and is the creature most likely to survive a nuclear war.
• In the southern hemisphere, water always swirl anti-clockwise down into a pipe.
• About 8 million blood cells die in the human body every second, and the same number are born each second.
• Eighteen per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions are from cars.
• Every year, the Moon moves a further 3.82cm from the Earth.
• It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
• 35 meters of hair fiber is produced every day on the average adult scalp.
• Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow.
• Dolphins don't automatically breath; they have to tell themselves to do it.

•The term Cop comes from Constable on Patrol, which is a term used in England.
• The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
• Onions get their distinctive smell by soaking up sulfur from the
soil.
• Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.
• Whoopi Goldberg was a mortuary cosmetologist and a bricklayer before becoming an actress.
• Guinness Book Of Records holds the record for being the book most stolen from Public Libraries.
• Charlie Chaplin won third place in a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest.
• Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time. Another story states that: Mickey mouse was not named after Mickey Rooney he was made on a train ride from New York after Walt found out he didn't actually own Oswald the lucky rabbit. The mouse Walt drew was originally named Mortimor But his wife Lilly didn't like that name so she suggested Mickey and the name stuck.

• Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he didn't wear pants.
• From 1942 until the end of World War II, Oscars were made out of plaster to conserve metal. After the war, the winners received "real" replacement statues.

• The only Oscar statuette ever made of wood was presented to Edgar Bergen in 1938 for his "outstanding comic creation," his ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy.

• A person afflicted with hexadectylism has six fingers or six toes on one or both hands and feet.
• Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• Tokyo has had 24 recorded instances of people either killed or receiving serious skull fractures while bowing to each other with the traditional Japanese greeting.

Know About Spyware

2007-02-01T12:26:00.000+05:30

Spyware is computer software that collects personal information about users without their informed consent. The term, coined in 1995 but not widely used for another five years, is often used interchangeably with adware and malware (software designed to infiltrate and damage a computer respectively).

Personal information is secretly recorded with a variety of techniques, including logging keystrokes, recording Internet web browsing history, and scanning documents on the computer's hard disk. Purposes range from overtly criminal (theft of passwords and financial details) to the merely annoying (recording Internet search history for targeted advertising, while consuming computer resources). Spyware may collect different types of information. Some variants attempt to track the websites a user visits and then send this information to an advertising agency. More malicious variants attempt to intercept passwords or credit card numbers as a user enters them into a web form or other applications.

The spread of spyware has led to the development of an entire anti-spyware industry. Its products remove or disable existing spyware on the computers they are installed on and prevent its installation. However, a number of companies have incorporated forms of spyware into their products. These programs are not considered malware, but are still spyware as they watch and observe for advertising purposes. It is debatable whether such 'legitimate' uses of adware/spyware are malware since the user often has no knowledge of these 'legitimate' programs being installed on his/her computer and is generally unaware that these programs are infringing on his/her privacy. In any case, these programs still use the resources of the host computer without permission.

History and development

The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 16, 1995 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft's business model.^[1] Spyware at first denoted hardware meant for espionage purposes. However, in early 2000 the founder of Zone Labs, Gregor Freund, used the term in a press release for the ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall.^[2] Since then, "spyware" has taken on its present sense.

In early 2001, Steve Gibson of Gibson Research realized that advertising software had been installed on his system, and suspected it was stealing his personal information. After analysis, he determined that it was adware from the companies Aureate (later Radiate) and Conducent. Gibson developed and released the first anti-spyware program, OptOut. Many more have appeared since then.^[2]

According to a November 2004 study by AOL and the National Cyber-Security Alliance, 80% of surveyed users' computers had some form of spyware, with an average of 93 spyware components per computer (such counts usually include 'cookies' which report back to a website, but are not software as such). 89% of surveyed users with spyware reported that they did not know of its presence, and 95% reported that they had not given permission for the installation of the spyware.^[3]

As of 2006, spyware has become one of the preeminent security threats to computer systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems. In an estimate based on customer-sent scan logs, Webroot Software, makers of Spy Sweeper, said that 9 out of 10 computers connected to the Internet are infected.^[4] Computers where Internet Explorer (IE) is the primary browser are particularly vulnerable to such attacks not only because IE is the most widely-used^[5] but because its tight integration with Windows allows spyware access to crucial parts of the operating system.^[6]

Comparison

Spyware, adware and tracking

The term adware frequently refers to any software which displays advertisements, whether or not the user has consented. Programs such as the Eudora mail client display advertisements as an alternative to shareware registration fees. These classify as "adware" in the sense of advertising-supported software, but not as spyware. Adware in this form does not operate surreptitiously or mislead the user, and provides the user with a specific service.

Most spyware is adware in a different sense: it displays advertising. Claria Corporation's Gator Software and Exact Advertising's BargainBuddy are examples. Visited Web sites frequently install Gator on client machines in a surreptitious manner, and it directs revenue to the installing site and to Claria by displaying advertisements to the user. The user receives many pop-up advertisements.

Other spyware behavior, such as reporting on websites the user visits, occurs in the background. The data is used for "targeted" advertisement impressions. The prevalence of spyware has cast suspicion upon other programs that track Web browsing, even for statistical or research purposes. Some observers describe the Alexa Toolbar, an Internet Explorer plug-in published by Amazon.com, as spyware (and some anti-spyware programs report it as such).^{[citation needed]} Many users, however, choose to install it.^{[citation needed]}

Similarly, software bundled with free, advertising-supported programs such as P2P act as spyware, (and if removed disable the 'parent' program) yet people are willing to download it. This presents a dilemma for proprietors of anti-spyware products whose removal tools may inadvertently disable wanted programs. These recent test results show how a bundled software (WhenUSave) is ignored by popular anti spyware program AdAware, (but removed as spyware by most scanners) because it is part of the popular (but recently decommissioned) Edonkey client.

Spyware, virus and worm

Unlike viruses and worms, spyware does not usually self-replicate. Like many recent viruses, however, spyware — by design — exploits infected computers for commercial gain. Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited pop-up advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as credit card numbers); monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites.

Routes of infection

Spyware does not directly spread in the manner of a computer virus or worm: generally, an infected system does not attempt to transmit the infection to other computers. Instead, spyware gets on a system through deception of the user or through exploitation of software vulnerabilities.

Most spyware is installed without users being aware. Since they tend not to install software if they know that it will disrupt their working environment and compromise their privacy, spyware deceives users, either by piggybacking on a piece of desirable software such as Kazaa, or tricking them into installing it (the Trojan horse method). Some "rogue" anti-spyware programs even masquerade as security software.

The distributor of spyware usually presents the program as a useful utility — for instance as a "Web accelerator" or as a helpful software agent. Users download and install the software without immediately suspecting that it could cause harm. For example, Bonzi Buddy, a spyware program targeted at children, claims that:

He will explore the Internet with you as your very own friend and sidekick! He can talk, walk, joke, browse, search, e-mail, and download like no other friend you've ever had! He even has the ability to compare prices on the products you love and help you save money! Best of all, he's FREE!^[7]

Spyware can also come bundled with shareware or other downloadable software, as well as music CDs. The user downloads a program and installs it, and the installer additionally installs the spyware. Although the desirable software itself may do no harm, the bundled spyware does. In some cases, spyware authors have paid shareware authors to bundle spyware with their software. In other cases, spyware authors have repackaged desirable free software with installers that add spyware.

A third way of distributing spyware involves tricking users by manipulating security features designed to prevent unwanted installations. Internet Explorer prevents websites from initiating an unwanted download. Instead, it requires a user action, such as clicking on a link. However, links can prove deceptive: for instance, a pop-up ad may appear like a standard Windows dialog box. The box contains a message such as "Would you like to optimize your Internet access?" with links which look like buttons reading Yes and No. No matter which "button" the user presses, a download starts, placing the spyware on the user's system. Later versions of Internet Explorer offer fewer avenues for this attack.

Some spyware authors infect a system through security holes in the Web browser or in other software. When the user navigates to a Web page controlled by the spyware author, the page contains code which attacks the browser and forces the download and installation of spyware. The spyware author would also have some extensive knowledge of commercially-available anti-virus and firewall software. This has become known as a "drive-by download", which leaves the user a hapless bystander to the attack. Common browser exploits target security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and in the Microsoft Java runtime.

The installation of spyware frequently involves Internet Explorer. Its popularity and history of security issues have made it the most frequent target. Its deep integration with the Windows environment and scriptability make it an obvious point of attack into Windows. Internet Explorer also serves as a point of attachment for spyware in the form of Browser Helper Objects, which modify the browser's behaviour to add toolbars or to redirect traffic.

In a few cases, a worm or virus has delivered a spyware payload. Some attackers used the Spybot worm to install spyware that put pornographic pop-ups on the infected system's screen.^[8] By directing traffic to ads set up to channel funds to the spyware authors, they profit personally.

Effects and behaviors

A spyware program is rarely alone on a computer: an affected machine can rapidly be infected by many other components. Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and degradation of system performance. A spyware infestation can create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic, all of which slow the computer down. Stability issues, such as application or system-wide crashes, are also common. Spyware which interferes with networking software commonly causes difficulty connecting to the Internet.

In some infections, the spyware is not even evident. Users assume in those situations that the issues relate to hardware, to Windows installation problems, or a virus. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to contacting technical support experts, or even buying a new computer because the existing system "has become too slow". Badly infected systems may require a clean reinstall of all their software in order to return to full functionality.

Only rarely does a single piece of software render a computer unusable. Rather, a computer will likely have multiple infections. As the 2004 AOL study noted, if a computer has any spyware at all, it typically has dozens of different pieces installed. The cumulative effect, and the interactions between spyware components, cause the symptoms commonly reported by users: a computer which slows to a crawl, overwhelmed by the many parasitic processes running on it. Moreover, some types of spyware disable software firewalls and anti-virus software, and/or reduce browser security settings, thus opening the system to further opportunistic infections, much like an immune deficiency disease. Some spyware has disabled or even removed competing spyware programs, on the grounds that more spyware-related annoyances make it even more likely that users will take action to remove the programs. One spyware maker, Avenue Media, even sued a competitor, Direct Revenue, over this; the two later settled with an agreement not to disable each others' products.^[9]

Some other types of spyware (Targetsoft, for example) modify system files so they will be harder to remove. Targetsoft modifies the "Winsock" Windows Sockets files. The deletion of the spyware-infected file "inetadpt.dll" will interrupt normal networking usage. Unlike users of many other operating systems, a typical Windows user has administrative privileges, mostly for convenience. Because of this, any program the user runs (intentionally or not) has unrestricted access to the system. Spyware, along with other threats, has led some Windows users to move to other platforms such as Linux or Apple Macintosh, which are less attractive targets for malware. This is because these programs are not granted unrestricted access to the operating system (due to the Unix underpinnings upon which both Linux and Mac OS X are built) though some allege it's partly due to the far smaller number of machines installed with these operating systems making spyware development potentially less profitable for these platforms.^{[citation needed]}

Many spyware programs display advertisements. Some programs simply display pop-up ads on a regular basis; for instance, one every several minutes, or one when the user opens a new browser window. Others display ads in response to specific sites that the user visits. Spyware operators present this feature as desirable to advertisers, who may buy ad placement in pop-ups displayed when the user visits a particular site. It is also one of the purposes for which spyware programs gather information on user behavior. Pop-ups are one of users' most common complaints about spyware.^{[citation needed]}

Many users complain about irritating or offensive advertisements as well. As with many banner ads, many spyware advertisements use animation or flickering banners which can be visually distracting and annoying to users. Pop-up ads for pornography often display indiscriminately. When children are the users, this could possibly violate anti-pornography laws in some jurisdictions.

A further issue in the case of some spyware programs has to do with the replacement of banner ads on viewed web sites. Spyware that acts as a web proxy or a Browser Helper Object can replace references to a site's own advertisements (which fund the site) with advertisements that instead fund the spyware operator. This cuts into the margins of advertising-funded Web sites.

"Stealware" and affiliate fraud

A few spyware vendors, notably 180 Solutions, have written what the New York Times has dubbed "stealware", and what spyware-researcher Ben Edelman terms affiliate fraud, also known as click fraud. Stealware diverts the payment of affiliate marketing revenues from the legitimate affiliate to the spyware vendor.

Spyware which attacks affiliate networks places the spyware operator's affiliate tag on the user's activity—replacing any other tag, if there is one. The spyware operator is the only party that gains from this. The user has their choices thwarted, a legitimate affiliate loses revenue, Networks' reputations are injured, and vendors are harmed by having to pay out affiliate revenues to an "affiliate" who is not party to a contract.^[10]

Affiliate fraud is a violation of the terms of service of most affiliate marketing networks. As a result, spyware operators such as 180 Solutions have been terminated from affiliate networks including LinkShare and ShareSale.^{[citation needed]}

Identity theft and fraud

In one case, spyware has been closely associated with identity theft.^[11] In August 2005, researchers from security software firm Sunbelt Software believed that the makers of the common CoolWebSearch spyware had used it to transmit "chat sessions, user names, passwords, bank information, etc.",^[12] but it turned out that "it actually (was) its own sophisticated criminal little trojan that's independent of CWS."^[13] This case is currently under investigation by the FBI.

That case aside, identity theft remains theoretically possible as keyloggers are routinely packaged with spyware. Information security researcher John Bambenek estimates that identity thieves have stolen over $24 billion US dollars of account information in the United States alone.^[14]

Spyware-makers may commit wire fraud with dialer program spyware. These can reset a modem to dial up a premium-rate telephone number instead of the usual ISP. Connecting to these suspicious numbers involves long-distance or overseas charges which invariably result in high charges. Dialers are ineffective on computers that do not have a modem, or are not connected to a telephone line.

Digital rights management

Some copy-protection technologies have borrowed from spyware. In 2005, Sony BMG Music Entertainment was found to be using rootkits in its XCP digital rights management technology ^[15] Like spyware, not only was it difficult to detect and uninstall, it was so poorly written that most efforts to remove it could have rendered computers unable to function. Texas state attorney general Greg Abbott filed suit,^[16] and three separate class-action suits were filed..^[17] Sony BMG later provided a workaround on its website to help users remove it.^[18]

Beginning April 25, 2006, Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications application^[19] install on most Windows PCs as a "critical security update". While the main pupose of this deliberately non-uninstallable application is making sure the copy of Windows on the machine was lawfully purchased and installed, it also installs software that has been accused of "phoning home" on a daily basis, like spyware^[20]^[21]. It can be removed with the RemoveWGA tool.

Spyware and cookies

Anti-spyware programs often report Web advertisers' HTTP cookies, the small text files that track browsing activity, as spyware. While they are not inherently malicious, many users object to third parties using space on their personal computers for their business purposes, and so many anti-spyware programs offer to remove them.

Examples of spyware

These common spyware programs illustrate the diversity of behaviors found in these attacks. Note that as with computer viruses, researchers give names to spyware programs which may not be used by their creators. Programs may be grouped into "families" based not on shared program code, but on common behaviors, or by "following the money" of apparent financial or business connections. For instance, a number of the spyware programs distributed by Claria are collectively known as "Gator". Likewise, programs which are frequently installed together may be described as parts of the same spyware package, even if they function separately.

CoolWebSearch, a group of programs, takes advantage of Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. The package directs traffic to advertisements on Web sites including coolwebsearch.com. It displays pop-up ads, rewrites search engine results, and alter the infected computer's hosts file to direct DNS lookups to these sites.^[22]

Internet Optimizer, also known as DyFuCa, redirects Internet Explorer error pages to advertising. When users follow a broken link or enter an erroneous URL, they see a page of advertisements. However, because password-protected Web sites (HTTP Basic authentication) use the same mechanism as HTTP errors, Internet Optimizer makes it impossible for the user to access password-protected sites.^[22]

180 Solutions (now Zango) transmits detailed information to advertisers about the Web sites which users visit. It also alters HTTP requests for affiliate advertisements linked from a Web site, so that the advertisements make unearned profit for the 180 Solutions company. It opens pop-up ads that cover over the Web sites of competing companies. ^[23]

HuntBar, aka WinTools or Adware.Websearch, is a small family of spyware programs distributed by TrafficSyndicate. TrafficSyndicate.com is a trademark of IBIS, LLC. It is installed by an ActiveX drive-by download at affiliate Web sites, or by advertisements displayed by other spyware programs — an example of how spyware can install more spyware. These programs add toolbars to IE, track browsing behavior, redirect affiliate references, and display advertisements.^[24]^[25]

Movieland, also known as Moviepass.tv or Popcorn.net, is a movie download service that has been the subject of thousands of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the Better Business Bureau, and others by consumers claiming they were held hostage by its repeated pop-up windows and demands for payment.^[26] The FTC has filed a complaint against Movieland.com and eleven other defendants, charging them with having "engaged in a nationwide scheme to use deception and coercion to extract payments from consumers." The complaint alleges that the software repeatedly opened oversized pop-up windows that could not be closed or minimized, accompanied by music that lasted nearly a minute, demanding payment of at least $29.95 to end the pop-up cycle; and claiming that consumers had signed up for a three-day free trial but did not cancel their membership before the trial period was over, and were thus obligated to pay.^[27]^[28]

Legal issues related to spyware

Criminal law

Unauthorized access to a computer is illegal under computer crime laws, such as the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the U.K.'s Computer Misuse Act and similar laws in other countries. Since the owners of computers infected with spyware generally claim that they never authorized the installation, a prima facie reading would suggest that the promulgation of spyware would count as a criminal act. Law enforcement has often pursued the authors of other malware, particularly viruses. However, few spyware developers have been prosecuted, and many operate openly as strictly legitimate businesses, though some have faced lawsuits. ^[29]^[30]

Spyware producers argue that, contrary to the users' claims, users do in fact give consent to installations. Spyware that comes bundled with shareware applications may be described in the legalese text of an end-user license agreement (EULA). Many users habitually ignore these purported contracts, but spyware companies such as Claria claim these demonstrate that users have consented.

Despite the ubiquity of EULAs and of "clickwrap" agreements, under which a single click can be taken as consent to the entire text, relatively little case law has resulted from their use. It has been established in most common law jurisdictions that a clickwrap agreement can be a binding contract in certain circumstances.^[31] This does not, however, mean that every such agreement is a contract or that every term in one is enforceable.

Some jurisdictions, including the U.S. states of Iowa ^[32] and Washington ^[33], have passed laws criminalizing some forms of spyware. Such laws make it illegal for anyone other than the owner or operator of a computer to install software that alters Web-browser settings, monitors keystrokes, or disables computer-security software.

Civil law

New York State Attorney General and Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has pursued spyware companies for fraudulent installation of software.^[34] In a suit brought in 2005 by Spitzer, the California firm Intermix Media, Inc. ended up settling by agreeing to pay US$7.5 million and to stop distributing spyware.^[35]

The hijacking of Web advertisements has also led to litigation. In June 2002, a number of large Web publishers sued Claria for replacing advertisements, but settled out of court.

Courts have not yet had to decide whether advertisers can be held liable for spyware which displays their ads. In many cases, the companies whose advertisements appear in spyware pop-ups do not directly do business with the spyware firm. Rather, they have contracted with an advertising agency, which in turn contracts with an online subcontractor who gets paid by the number of "impressions" or appearances of the advertisement. Some major firms such as Dell Computer and Mercedes-Benz have sacked advertising agencies which have run their ads in spyware.^[36]

Libel suits by spyware developers

Litigation has gone both ways. Since "spyware" has become a common pejorative, some makers have filed libel and defamation actions when their products have been so described. In 2003, Gator (now known as Claria) filed suit against the website PC Pitstop for describing its program as "spyware".^[37] PC Pitstop settled, agreeing not to use the word "spyware", but continues to describe harm caused by the Gator/Claria software. ^[38] As a result, other antispyware and antivirus companies have also used other terms such as "potentially unwanted programs" or greyware to denote these products.

Remedies and prevention

As the spyware threat has worsened, a number of techniques have emerged to counteract it. These include programs designed to remove or to block spyware, as well as various user practices which reduce the chance of getting spyware on a system.

Nonetheless, spyware remains a costly problem. When a large number of pieces of spyware have infected a Windows computer, the only remedy may involve backing up user data, and fully reinstalling the operating system.

Anti-spyware programs

Report on scan of an infected system from Lavasoft's Ad-Aware

Many programmers and some commercial firms have released products designed to remove or block spyware. Steve Gibson's OptOut, mentioned above, pioneered a growing category. Programs such as Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE and Patrick Kolla's Spybot - Search & Destroy rapidly gained popularity as effective tools to remove, and in some cases intercept, spyware programs. More recently Microsoft acquired the GIANT AntiSpyware software, rebranding it as Windows AntiSpyware beta and releasing it as a free download for Windows XP and Windows 2003 users. In early spring, 2006, Microsoft renamed the beta software to Windows Defender, and it was released as a free download in October 2006. Microsoft has also announced that the product will ship (for free) with Windows Vista. Other well-known anti-spyware products include Webroot Spy Sweeper, Trend Micro's Anti-Spyware, PC Tools' Spyware Doctor, and Sunbelt's CounterSpy (which uses a forked codebase from the GIANT Anti-Spyware, now called Microsoft's Windows Defender). Blue Coat Systems released a gateway anti-spyware solution in 2004.

Major anti-virus firms such as Symantec, McAfee and Sophos have come later to the table, adding anti-spyware features to their existing anti-virus products. Early on, anti-virus firms expressed reluctance to add anti-spyware functions, citing lawsuits brought by spyware authors against the authors of web sites and programs which described their products as "spyware". However, recent versions of these major firms' home and business anti-virus products do include anti-spyware functions, albeit treated differently from viruses. Symantec Anti-Virus, for instance, categorizes spyware programs as "extended threats" and now offers real-time protection from them (as it does for viruses). Recently, the anti virus company Grisoft, who make the AVG anti-virus program, acquired anti-spyware firm Ewido Networks, re-labeling their Ewido anti-spyware program as AVG Anti-Spyware. This shows a trend by anti virus companies to launch a dedicated solution to spyware and malware. Zone Labs, who make the Zone Alarm firewall have also released an anti spyware program.

Microsoft Anti-Spyware, in real-time protection blocks an instance of the AlwaysUpdateNews from being installed.

Anti-spyware programs can combat spyware in two ways:

Real-time protection, which prevents the installation of spyware;
Detection and removal, which removes spyware from an infected computer.

Writers of anti-spyware programs usually find detection and removal simpler, and many more programs have become available which do so. Such programs inspect the contents of the Windows registry, the operating system files, and installed programs, and remove files and entries which match a list of known spyware components. Real-time protection from spyware works identically to real-time anti-virus protection: the software scans incoming network data and disk files at download time, and blocks the activity of components known to represent spyware. In some cases, it may also intercept attempts to install start-up items or to modify browser settings. Because many spyware and adware are installed as a result of browser exploits or user error, using security software (some of which are antispyware, though many are not) to sandbox browsers can also be effective to help restrict any damage done.

Earlier versions of anti-spyware programs focused chiefly on detection and removal. Javacool Software's SpywareBlaster, one of the first to offer real-time protection, blocked the installation of ActiveX-based and other spyware programs. To date, other programs such as Ad-Aware and Windows Defender now combine the two approaches, while SpywareBlaster remains focused on prevention.

Like most anti-virus software, many anti-spyware/adware tools require a frequently-updated database of threats. As new spyware programs are released, anti-spyware developers discover and evaluate them, making "signatures" or "definitions" which allow the software to detect and remove the spyware. As a result, anti-spyware software is of limited usefulness without a regular source of updates. Some vendors provide a subscription-based update service, while others provide updates gratis. Updates may be installed automatically on a schedule or before doing a scan, or may be done manually.

Not all programs rely on updated definitions. Some programs rely partly (for instance many antispyware programs such as Windows Defender, Spybot's TeaTimer and Spysweeper) or fully (programs falling under the class of Hips such as BillP's WinPatrol), on historical observation. They watch certain configuration parameters (such as certain portions of the Windows registry or browser configuration) and report any change to the user, without judgment or recommendation. While they do not rely on updated definitions, which may allow them to spot newer spyware, they can offer no guidance. The user is left to determine "what did I just do, and is this configuration change appropriate?"

Windows Defender's Spynet attempts to alleviate this through offering a community to share information, which helps guide both users, who can look decisions made by others, and analysts, who can spot fast-spreading spyware. A popular generic spyware removal tool used by those with a certain degree of expertise is HijackThis, which scans certain areas of the Windows OS where spyware often resides and presents a list with items to delete manually. As most of the items are legitimate windows files/registry entries it is advised for those who are less knowledgeable on this subject to post a HijackThis log on the numerous antispyware sites and let the experts decide what to delete. Open source anti-spyware programs are also available. One program, wssecure, can detect new processes and change in system files using checksum verification, a technique that can be helpful in detecting spyware that are downloaded automatically due to Windows vulnerabilities.

If a spyware program is not blocked and manages to get itself installed, it may resist attempts to terminate or uninstall it. Some programs work in pairs: when an anti-spyware scanner (or the user) terminates one running process, the other one respawns the killed program. Likewise, some spyware will detect attempts to remove registry keys and immediately add them again. Usually, booting the infected computer in safe mode allows an anti-spyware program a better chance of removing persistent spyware. Killing the process tree can also work.

A new breed of spyware (Look2Me spyware by NicTechNetworks is a good example) is starting to hide inside system-critical processes and start up even in safe mode. With no process to terminate they are harder to detect and remove. Sometimes they do not even leave any on-disk signatures. Rootkit technology is also seeing increasing use,^[39] as is the use of NTFS alternate data streams. Newer spyware programs also have specific countermeasures against well known anti-malware products and may prevent them from running or being installed, or even uninstall them. An example of one that uses all three methods is Gromozon, a new breed of malware. It uses alternate data streams to hide. A rootkit hides it even from alternate data streams scanners and actively stops popular rootkit scanners from running.

Malicious websites attempt to install spyware on readers' computers.

[edit] Fake anti-spyware programs

It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article entitled List of fake anti-spyware programs.

Malicious programmers have released a large number of fake anti-spyware programs, and widely distributed Web banner ads now spuriously warn users that their computers have been infected with spyware, directing them to purchase programs which do not actually remove spyware — or worse, may add more spyware of their own.

The recent proliferation of fake or spoofed antivirus products has occasioned some concern. Such products often bill themselves as antispyware, antivirus, or registry cleaners, and sometimes feature popups prompting users to install them. They are called rogue software.

Known offenders include:

errorsafe
Pest Trap
SpyAxe
AntiVirus Gold
SpywareStrike
Spyware Quake
WorldAntiSpy

Spy Sheriff
Spy Wiper
PAL Spyware Remover
PSGuard
Malware
WinAntiVirus Pro 2006
WinFixer

On 2006-01-26, Microsoft and the Washington state attorney general filed suit against Secure Computer for its Spyware Cleaner product.^[42] On 2006-12-04, the Washington attorney general announced that Secure Computer had paid $1 million to settle with the state. As of that date, Microsoft's case against Secure Computer remained pending.^[43]

Security practices

To deter spyware, computer users have found several practices useful in addition to installing anti-spyware programs.

Many system operators install a web browser other than IE, such as Opera or Mozilla Firefox. Although these have also suffered some security vulnerabilities, they are not targeted as much as IE because most users who are likely to fall for spyware are not using them.^{[citation needed]} Though no browser is completely safe, Internet Explorer is at a greater risk for spyware infection due to its large user base as well as vulnerabilities such as ActiveX.

Some ISPs — particularly colleges and universities — have taken a different approach to blocking spyware: they use their network firewalls and web proxies to block access to Web sites known to install spyware. On March 31, 2005, Cornell University's Information Technology department released a report detailing the behavior of one particular piece of proxy-based spyware, Marketscore, and the steps the university took to intercept it.^[44] Many other educational institutions have taken similar steps. Spyware programs which redirect network traffic cause greater technical-support problems than programs which merely display ads or monitor users' behavior, and so may more readily attract institutional attention.

Some users install a large hosts file which prevents the user's computer from connecting to known spyware related web addresses. However, by connecting to the numeric IP address, rather than the domain name, spyware may bypass this sort of protection.

Spyware may get installed via certain shareware programs offered for download. Downloading programs only from reputable sources can provide some protection from this source of attack. Recently, CNet revamped its download directory: it has stated that it will only keep files that pass inspection by Ad-Aware and Spyware Doctor.

Know About Computer Virus

2007-02-01T12:02:00.002+05:30

A computer virus is a computer program which reproduces. A computer virus is often simply called a virus. The term is commonly used to refer to a range of viruses, but a true virus does not need to be harmful. To distribute itself, a virus needs execution or otherwise be interpreted. Viruses often hide themselves inside other programs to be executed.

A computer virus reproduces by making, possibly evolved, copies of itself in the computer's memory, storage, or over a network. This is similar to, but not exactly the same as the way a biological virus works. It is estimated by some experts that the Mydoom worm infected a quarter-million computers in a single day in January 2004. Another example is the ILOVEYOU virus, which occurred in 2000 and had a similar effect.

There are tens of thousands of viruses operating in the general Internet today, and new ones are discovered every day. While a generic explanation of how viruses work is difficult due to the wide variety of infection or spreading patterns, there are broad categories commonly used to describe various types of viruses.

Basic types of viruses

Virus types are used as a way for people to think about the things that viruses do, but being overly dogmatic about these types can often be confusing. Take these descriptions for the value they bring, but don't assume that they are comprehensive or particularly accurate in terms of describing the potential sorts of viruses that can be encountered.

Boot sector viruses

A boot sector virus affects the boot sector of a hard disk, which is a very crucial part. The boot sector is where all information about the drive is stored, along with a program that makes it up. By inserting its code into the boot sector, a virus guarantees that it loads into memory during every boot sequence. A boot virus does not affect files; instead, it affects the disks that contain them. Perhaps this is the reason for their downfall. During the days when programs were carried around on floppies, the boot sector viruses used to spread like wildfire. However, with the CD-ROM revolution, it became impossible to infect pre-written data on a CD, which eventually stopped such viruses from spreading. Though boot viruses still exist, they are rare compared to new-age malicious software. Another reason why they’re not so prevalent is that operating systems today protect the boot sector, which makes it difficult for them to thrive. Examples of boot viruses are Polyboot.B and AntiEXE.

According to Symantec, Boot Sector Viruses differ only slightly from Master Boot Record Viruses in their respective effects- both load into memory and stay there (resident viruses), thus infecting any executable launched afterwards. In addition, both types may prevent recent Operating Systems from booting.

Multipartite viruses

Multipartite viruses are a combination of boot sector viruses and file viruses. These viruses come in through infected media and reside in memory. They then move on to the boot sector of the hard drive. From there, the virus infects executable files on the hard drive and spreads across the system. There aren’t too many multipartite viruses in existence today, but in their heyday, they accounted for some major problems due to their capacity to combine different infection techniques. A well-known multipartite virus is Ywinz.

Macro viruses

Macro viruses infect files that are created using certain applications or programs that contain macros. These include Microsoft Office documents such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Access databases and other similar application files such as Corel Draw, AmiPro etc. Since macro viruses are written in the language of the application and not in that of the operating system, they are known to be platform-independent—they can spread between Windows, Mac and any other system, so long as they are running the required application. With the ever-increasing capabilities of macro languages in applications, and the possibility of infections spreading over networks, these viruses are major threats.

The first macro virus was written for Microsoft Word and was discovered back in August 1995. Today, there are thousands of macro viruses in existence—some examples are Relax, Melissa.A and Bablas. pc

Network viruses

This kind of virus is proficient in quickly spreading across a Local Area Network (LAN) or even over the Internet. Usually, it propagates through shared resources, such as shared drives and folders. Once it infects a new system, it searches for potential targets by searching the network for other vulnerable systems. Once a new vulnerable system is found, the network virus infects the other system, and thus spreads over the network. Some of the most notorious network viruses are Nimda and SQLSlammer.

Other malicious software

Earlier, the only way a computer was at risk was when you inserted an infected floppy. With the new age of technology, almost every computer is interconnected to the rest of the world at some point or other, so it’s difficult to pinpoint the source and/or time of the infection. As if that weren’t bad enough, new-age computing has also brought about a new breed of malicious software. Today, the term ‘virus’ has become a generic term used for all the different ways that your computer can be attacked by malicious software. Besides the type of viruses we mentioned, here are some of the newer problems we face today.

Trojan horses

File-Destructive Trojans

The only function of these Trojans is to destroy and delete files. They can automatically delete all the core system files on your machine. The Trojan could be controlled by the attacker or could be programmed to strike like a logic bomb, starting on a specific day or hour.

Denial of Service Trojans

The main idea behind Denial of Service (DoS) Attack Trojans is to generate a lot of Internet traffic on the victim’s machine, to the extent that the Internet connection is too overloaded to let the user visit a website or download anything. Another variation of a DoS Trojan is the mail-bomb Trojan, whose main aim is to infect as many machines as possible and simultaneously attack specific email addresses with random subjects and contents that cannot be filtered.

Proxy/Wingate Trojans

These types of Trojan turn the victim’s computer into a proxy/wingate server. That way, the infected computer is available to the whole world to be used for anonymous access to various risky Internet services. The attacker can register domains or access pornographic Web sites with stolen credit cards or do similar illegal activities without being traced.

FTP Trojans

These trojans are probably the most simple, and are outdated. The only thing they do is open port 21 — the port for FTP transfers — and let everyone connect to your machine. Newer versions are password-protected, so only the attacker can connect to your computer.

Software Detection Killers

These Trojans kill popular anti-virus/firewall programs that protect your machine, to give the attacker access to it. A Trojan could have any one or a combination of the above-mentioned functionalities.

Worms

Computer Worms are viruses that reproduce and run independently, and travel across network connections. Two famous examples of worms are the MS-Blaster and Sasser worms.

Classification

Viruses can be subdivided into a number of types, the main ones being:

Boot sector viruses
Companion viruses
Email viruses
Logic bombs and time bombs
Macro viruses
Sentinels
WB Microworm
Cross-site scripting virus

Two other types of malware are often classified as viruses, but are actually forms of distributing malware:

Trojan horses
Worms

Boot sector virus

A boot sector virus alters or hides in the boot sector, usually the 1st sector, of a bootable disk or hard drive. Boot sector viruses were prevalent in the 1980s.

Companion virus

A companion virus^[1] does not have host files per se, but exploits MS-DOS. A companion virus creates new files (typically .COM but can also use other extensions such as ".EXD") that have the same file names as legitimate .EXE files. When a user types in the name of a desired program, if a user does not type in ".EXE" but instead does not specify a file extension, DOS will assume he meant the file with the extension that comes first in alphabetical order and run the virus. For instance, if a user had "(filename).COM" (the virus) and "(filename).EXE" and the user typed "filename", he will run "(filename).COM" and run the virus. The virus will spread and do other tasks before redirecting to the legitimate file, which operates normally. Some companion viruses are known to run under Windows 95 and on DOS emulators on Windows NT systems. Path companion viruses create files that have the same name as the legitimate file and place new virus copies earlier in the directory paths. These viruses have become increasingly rare with the introduction of Windows XP,which does not use the MS-DOS command prompt.

E-mail virus

An E-mail virus is a virus which uses e-mail messages as a mode of transport. These viruses often copy themselves by automatically mailing copies to hundreds of people in the victim's address book.

Logic bomb

A logic bomb employs code that lies inert until specific conditions are met. The resolution of the conditions will trigger a certain function (such as printing a message to the user and/or deleting files). Logic bombs may reside within standalone programs, or they may be part of worms or viruses. An example of a logic bomb would be a virus that waits to execute until it has infected a certain number of hosts. A time bomb is a subset of logic bomb, which is set to trigger on a particular date and/or time. An example of a time bomb is the infamous ‘Friday the 13th’ virus.

Macro virus

A macro virus, often written in the scripting languages for programs such as Word and Excel, is spread by infecting documents and spreadsheets.

Cross-site scripting virus

A cross-site scripting virus (XSSV) is a type of virus that utilizes cross-site scripting vulnerabilities to replicate. A XSSV is spread between vulnerable web applications and web browsers creating a symbiotic relationship.

Sentinels

A sentinel is a highly advanced virus capable of empowering the creator or perpetrator of the virus with remote access control over the computers that are infected. They are used to form vast networks of zombie or slave computers which in turn can be used for malicious purposes such as a Distributed Denial of Service attack.

Trojan horse

Trojan Horses are impostor files that claim to be something desirable but, in fact, are malicious. Rather than insert code into existing files, a Trojan horse appears to do one thing (install a screen saver, or show a picture inside an e-mail, for example) when in fact it does something entirely different, and potentially malicious, such as erase files. Trojans can also open back doors so that computer hackers can gain access to passwords and other personal information stored on a computer.

Although often referred to as such, Trojan horses are not viruses in the strict sense because they cannot replicate automatically. For a Trojan horse to spread, it must be invited onto a computer by the user opening an email attachment or downloading and running a file from the Internet, for example.

Worm

A worm is a piece of software that uses computer networks and security flaws to create copies of itself. A copy of the worm will scan the network for any other machine that has a specific security flaw. It replicates itself to the new machine using the security flaw, and then begins scanning and replicating a new worm.

Worms are programs that replicate themselves from system to system without the use of a host file. This is in contrast to viruses, which requires the spreading of an infected host file. Although worms generally exist inside of other files, often Word or Excel documents, there is a difference between how worms and viruses use the host file. Usually the worm will release a document that already has the "worm" macro inside the document. The entire document will travel from computer to computer, so the entire document should be considered the worm. Mydoom and ILOVEYOU are two examples of worms.

Effects of computer viruses

Some viruses are programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or reformatting the hard disk. Others are not designed to do any damage, but simply replicate themselves and make their presence known by presenting text, video, or audio messages. Even these benign viruses can create problems for the computer user. They typically take up computer memory used by legitimate programs. As a result, they often cause erratic behavior and can result in system crashes. In addition, many viruses are bug-ridden, and these bugs may lead to system crashes and data loss.

Use of the word "virus"

A backronym of "virus" is V.I.R.U.S.-(Vital Information Resources Under Siege).

The word virus is derived from and used in the same sense as the biological equivalent. The term "virus" is often used in common parlance to describe all kinds of malware (malicious software), including those that are more properly classified as worms or Trojans. Most popular anti-virus software packages defend against all of these types of attack. In some technical communities, the term "virus" is also extended to include the authors of malware, in an insulting sense. The English plural of "virus" is "viruses". Some people use "virii" or "viri" as a plural, but this is rare. For a discussion about whether "viri" and "virii" are correct alternatives of "viruses", see plural of virus.

The term "virus" was first used in an academic publication by Fred Cohen in his 1984 paper Experiments with Computer Viruses, where he credits Len Adleman with coining it. However, a 1972 science fiction novel by David Gerrold, When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, includes a description of a fictional computer program called "VIRUS" that worked just like a virus (and was countered by a program called "VACCINE"). The term "computer virus" with current usage also appears in the comic book Uncanny X-Men #158, written by Chris Claremont and published in 1982. Therefore, although Cohen's use of "virus" may, perhaps, have been the first "academic" use, the term had been used earlier.

History

A program called "Elk Cloner" is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" — that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1982 by Rich Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread by floppy disk. This virus was originally a joke, created by the high school student and put onto a game. The game was set to play, but release the virus on the 50th time of starting the game. Only this time, instead of playing the game, it would change to a blank screen that read a poem about the virus named Elk Cloner. The computer would then be infected.

The first PC virus was a boot sector virus called (c)Brain, created in 1986 by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, operating out of Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers reportedly created the virus to deter pirated copies of software they had written. However, analysts have claimed that the Ashar virus, a variant of Brain, possibly predated it based on code within the virus.

Before computer networks became widespread, most viruses spread on removable media, particularly floppy disks. In the early days of the personal computer, many users regularly exchanged information and programs on floppies. Some viruses spread by infecting programs stored on these disks, while others installed themselves into the disk boot sector, ensuring that they would be run when the user booted the computer from the disk.

Traditional computer viruses emerged in the 1980s, driven by the spread of personal computers and the resultant increase in BBS and modem use, and software sharing. Bulletin board driven software sharing contributed directly to the spread of Trojan horse programs, and viruses were written to infect popularly traded software. Shareware and bootleg software were equally common vectors for viruses on BBS's. Within the "pirate scene" of hobbyists trading illicit copies of commercial software, traders in a hurry to obtain the latest applications and games were easy targets for viruses.

Since the mid-1990s, macro viruses have become common. Most of these viruses are written in the scripting languages for Microsoft programs such as Word and Excel. These viruses spread in Microsoft Office by infecting documents and spreadsheets. Since Word and Excel were also available for Mac OS, most of these viruses were able to spread on Macintosh computers as well. Most of these viruses did not have the ability to send infected e-mail. Those viruses which did spread through e-mail took advantage of the Microsoft Outlook COM interface.

Macro viruses pose unique problems for detection software. For example, some versions of Microsoft Word allowed macros to replicate themselves with additional blank lines. The virus behaved identically but would be misidentified as a new virus. In another example, if two macro viruses simultaneously infect a document, the combination of the two, if also self-replicating, can appear as a "mating" of the two and would likely be detected as a virus unique from the "parents".^[2]

A computer virus may also be transmitted through instant messaging. A virus may send a web address link as an instant message to all the contacts on an infected machine. If the recipient, thinking the link is from a friend (a trusted source) and follows the link to the website, the virus hosted at the site may be able to infect this new computer and continue propagating.

The newest species of the virus family is the cross-site scripting virus. The virus emerged from research and was academically demonstrated in 2005. This virus utilizes cross-site scripting vulnerabilities to propagate. Since 2005 there have been multiple instances of the cross-site scripting viruses in the wild, most notable sites affected have been MySpace and Yahoo.

Why people create computer viruses

Unlike biological viruses, computer viruses do not simply evolve by themselves. Computer viruses do not come into existence spontaneously, nor are they likely to be created by bugs in regular programs. They are deliberately created by programmers, or by people who use virus creation software. Computer viruses can only do what the programmers have programmed them to do.

Virus writers can have various reasons for creating and spreading malware. Viruses have been written as research projects, pranks, vandalism, to attack the products of specific companies, to distribute political messages, and financial gain from identity theft, spyware, and cryptoviral extortion. Some virus writers consider their creations to be works of art, and see virus writing as a creative hobby. Additionally, many virus writers oppose deliberately destructive payload routines. Many writers consider the systems they attack an intellectual challenge or a logical problem to be solved; this multiplies when a cat-and-mouse game is anticipated against anti-virus software. Some viruses were intended as "good viruses". They spread improvements to the programs they infect, or delete other viruses. These viruses are, however, quite rare, still consume system resources, may accidentally damage systems they infect, and, on occasion, have become infected and acted as vectors for malicious viruses. A poorly written "good virus" can also inadvertently become a virus in and of itself (for example, such a 'good virus' may misidentify its target file and delete an innocent system file by mistake). Moreover, they normally operate without asking for the permission of the computer owner. Since self-replicating code causes many complications, it is questionable if a well-intentioned virus can ever solve a problem in a way that is superior to a regular program that does not replicate itself. In short, no single answer is likely to cover the broad demographic of virus writers.

Releasing computer viruses (as well as worms) is a crime in most jurisdictions.

Replication strategies

In order to replicate itself, a virus must be permitted to execute code and write to memory. For this reason, many viruses attach themselves to executable files that may be part of legitimate programs. If a user tries to start an infected program, the virus' code may be executed first. Viruses can be divided into two types, on the basis of their behavior when they are executed. Nonresident viruses immediately search for other hosts that can be infected, infect these targets, and finally transfer control to the application program they infected. Resident viruses do not search for hosts when they are started. Instead, a resident virus loads itself into memory on execution and transfers control to the host program. The virus stays active in the background and infects new hosts when those files are accessed by other programs or the operating system itself.

Nonresident viruses

Nonresident viruses can be thought of as consisting of a finder module and a replication module. The finder module is responsible for finding new files to infect. For each new executable file the finder module encounters, it calls the replication module to infect that file.

For simple viruses the replicator's tasks are to:

Open the new file
Check if the executable file has already been infected (if it is, return to the finder module)
Append the virus code to the executable file
Save the executable's starting point
Change the executable's starting point so that it points to the start location of the newly copied virus code
Save the old start location to the virus in a way so that the virus branches to that location right after its execution.
Save the changes to the executable file
Close the infected file
Return to the finder so that it can find new files for the replicator to infect.

Resident viruses

Resident viruses contain a replication module that is similar to the one that is employed by nonresident viruses. However, this module is not called by a finder module. Instead, the virus loads the replication module into memory when it is executed and ensures that this module is executed each time the operating system is called to perform a certain operation. For example, the replication module can be called each time the operating system executes a file. In this case, the virus infects every suitable program that is executed on the computer.

Resident viruses are sometimes subdivided into a category of fast infectors and a category of slow infectors. Fast infectors are designed to infect as many files as possible. For instance, a fast infector can infect every potential host file that is accessed. This poses a special problem to anti-virus software, since a virus scanner will access every potential host file on a computer when it performs a system-wide scan. If the virus scanner fails to notice that such a virus is present in memory, the virus can "piggy-back" on the virus scanner and in this way infect all files that are scanned. Fast infectors rely on their fast infection rate to spread. The disadvantage of this method is that infecting many files may make detection more likely, because the virus may slow down a computer or perform many suspicious actions that can be noticed by anti-virus software. Slow infectors, on the other hand, are designed to infect hosts infrequently. For instance, some slow infectors only infect files when they are copied. Slow infectors are designed to avoid detection by limiting their actions: they are less likely to slow down a computer noticeably, and will at most infrequently trigger anti-virus software that detects suspicious behavior by programs. The slow infector approach does not seem very successful however.

Host types

Viruses have targeted various types of hosts. This is a non-exhaustive list:

Binary executable files (such as COM files and EXE files in MS-DOS, Portable Executable files in Microsoft Windows, and ELF files in Linux)
Volume Boot Records of floppy disks and hard disk partitions
The master boot record (MBR) of a hard disk
General-purpose script files (such as batch files in MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, VBScript files, and shell script files on Unix-like platforms).
Application-specific script files (such as Telix-scripts)
Documents that can contain macros (such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, AmiPro documents, and Microsoft Access database files)

Methods to avoid detection

In order to avoid detection by users, some viruses employ different kinds of deception. Some old viruses, especially on the MS-DOS platform, make sure that the "last modified" date of a host file stays the same when the file is infected by the virus. This approach does not fool anti-virus software, however.

Some viruses can infect files without increasing their sizes or damaging the files. They accomplish this by overwriting unused areas of executable files. These are called cavity viruses. For example the CIH virus, or Chernobyl Virus, infects Portable Executable files. Because those files had many empty gaps, the virus, which was 1 KB in length, did not add to the size of the file.

Some viruses try to avoid detection by killing the tasks associated with antivirus software before it can detect them.

As computers and operating systems grow larger and more complex, old hiding techniques need to be updated or replaced.

Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts

A virus needs to infect hosts in order to spread further. In some cases, it might be a bad idea to infect a host program. For example, many anti-virus programs perform an integrity check of their own code. Infecting such programs will therefore increase the likelihood that the virus is detected. For this reason, some viruses are programmed not to infect programs that are known to be part of anti-virus software. Another type of hosts that viruses sometimes avoid is bait files. Bait files (or goat files) are files that are specially created by anti-virus software, or by anti-virus professionals themselves, to be infected by a virus. These files can be created for various reasons, all of which are related to the detection of the virus:

Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to take a sample of a virus (i.e. a copy of a program file that is infected by the virus). It is more practical to store and exchange a small, infected bait file, than to exchange a large application program that has been infected by the virus.
Anti-virus professionals can use bait files to study the behavior of a virus and evaluate detection methods. This is especially useful when the virus is polymorphic. In this case, the virus can be made to infect a large number of bait files. The infected files can be used to test whether a virus scanner detects all versions of the virus.
Some anti-virus software employs bait files that are accessed regularly. When these files are modified, the anti-virus software warns the user that a virus is probably active on the system.

Since bait files are used to detect the virus, or to make detection possible, a virus can benefit from not infecting them. Viruses typically do this by avoiding suspicious programs, such as small program files or programs that contain certain patterns of 'garbage instructions'.

A related strategy to make baiting difficult is sparse infection. Sometimes, sparse infectors do not infect a host file that would be a suitable candidate for infection in other circumstances. For example, a virus can decide on a random basis whether to infect a file or not, or a virus can only infect host files on particular days of the week.

Stealth

Some viruses try to trick anti-virus software by intercepting its requests to the operating system. A virus can hide itself by intercepting the anti-virus software’s request to read the file and passing the request to the virus, instead of the OS. The virus can then return an uninfected version of the file to the anti-virus software, so that it seems that the file is "clean". Modern anti-virus software employs various techniques to counter stealth mechanisms of viruses. The only completely reliable method to avoid stealth is to boot from a medium that is known to be clean.

[edit] Self-modification

Most modern antivirus programs try to find virus-patterns inside ordinary programs by scanning them for so-called virus signatures. A signature is a characteristic byte-pattern that is part of a certain virus or family of viruses. If a virus scanner finds such a pattern in a file, it notifies the user that the file is infected. The user can then delete, or (in some cases) "clean" or "heal" the infected file. Some viruses employ techniques that make detection by means of signatures difficult or impossible. These viruses modify their code on each infection. That is, each infected file contains a different variant of the virus.

Simple self-modifications

In the past, some viruses modified themselves only in simple ways. For example, they regularly exchanged subroutines in their code for others that would perform the same action - for example, 2+2 could be swapped for 1+3. This poses no problems to a somewhat advanced virus scanner.

Encryption with a variable key

A more advanced method is the use of simple encryption to encipher the virus. In this case, the virus consists of a small decrypting module and an encrypted copy of the virus code. If the virus is encrypted with a different key for each infected file, the only part of the virus that remains constant is the decrypting module, which would (for example) be appended to the end. In this case, a virus scanner cannot directly detect the virus using signatures, but it can still detect the decrypting module, which still makes indirect detection of the virus possible.

Mostly, the decryption techniques that these viruses employ are simple and mostly done by just XORing each byte with a randomized key that was saved by the parent virus. The use of XOR-operations has the additional advantage that the encryption and decryption routine are the same (a XOR b = c, c XOR b = a.)

Polymorphic code

Polymorphic code was the first technique that posed a serious threat to virus scanners. Just like regular encrypted viruses, a polymorphic virus infects files with an encrypted copy of itself, which is decoded by a decryption module. In the case of polymorphic viruses however, this decryption module is also modified on each infection. A well-written polymorphic virus therefore has no parts that stay the same on each infection, making it impossible to detect directly using signatures. Anti-virus software can detect it by decrypting the viruses using an emulator, or by statistical pattern analysis of the encrypted virus body. To enable polymorphic code, the virus has to have a polymorphic engine (also called mutating engine or mutation engine) somewhere in its encrypted body. See Polymorphic code for technical detail on how such engines operate.

Some viruses employ polymorphic code in a way that constrains the mutation rate of the virus significantly. For example, a virus can be programmed to mutate only slightly over time, or it can be programmed to refrain from mutating when it infects a file on a computer that already contains copies of the virus. The advantage of using such slow polymorphic code is that it makes it more difficult for anti-virus professionals to obtain representative samples of the virus, because bait files that are infected in one run will typically contain identical or similar samples of the virus. This will make it more likely that the detection by the virus scanner will be unreliable, and that some instances of the virus may be able to avoid detection.

Metamorphic code

To avoid being detected by emulation, some viruses rewrite themselves completely each time they are to infect new executables. Viruses that use this technique are said to be metamorphic. To enable metamorphism, a metamorphic engine is needed. A metamorphic virus is usually very large and complex. For example, W32/Simile consisted of over 14000 lines of Assembly language code, 90% of it part of the metamorphic engine.

Vulnerability and countermeasures

The vulnerability of operating systems to viruses

Another analogy to biological viruses: just as genetic diversity in a population decreases the chance of a single disease wiping out a population, the diversity of software systems on a network similarly limits the destructive potential of viruses.

This became a particular concern in the 1990s, when Microsoft gained market dominance in desktop operating systems and office suites. The users of Microsoft software (especially networking software such as Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer) are especially vulnerable to the spread of viruses. Microsoft software is targeted by virus writers due to their desktop dominance, and is often criticized for including many errors and holes for virus writers to exploit. Integrated applications, applications with scripting languages with access to the file system (for example Visual Basic Script (VBS), and applications with networking features) are also particularly vulnerable.

Although Windows is by far the most popular operating system for virus writers, some viruses also exist on other platforms. Any operating system that allows third-party programs to run can theoretically run viruses. Some operating systems are less secure than others. Unix-based OS's (and NTFS-aware applications on Windows NT based platforms) only allow their users to run executables within their protected space in their own directories.

As of 2006, there are relatively few security exploits ^[4] targeting Mac OS X (a Unix-based operating system); the known vulnerabilities fall under the classifications of worms and Trojans. The number of viruses for the older Apple operating systems, known as Mac OS Classic, varies greatly from source to source, with Apple stating that there are only four known viruses, and independent sources stating there are as many as 63 viruses. It is safe to say that Macs are less likely to be exploited due to their secure Unix base, and because a Mac-specific virus could only infect a small proportion of computers (making the effort less desirable). Virus vulnerability between Macs and Windows was/is a chief catalyst of the platform wars between Apple Computer and Microsoft.

Windows and Unix have similar scripting abilities, but while Unix natively blocks normal users from having access to make changes to the operating system environment, Windows does not. In 1997, when a virus for Linux was released – known as "Bliss" – leading antivirus vendors issued warnings that Unix-like systems could fall prey to viruses just like Windows.^[5] The Bliss virus may be considered characteristic of viruses – as opposed to worms – on Unix systems. Bliss requires that the user run it explicitly, and it can only infect programs that the user has the access to modify. Unlike Windows users, most Unix users do not log in as an administrator user except to install or configure software; as a result, even if a user ran the virus, it could not harm their operating system. The Bliss virus never became widespread, and remains chiefly a research curiosity. Its creator later posted the source code to Usenet, allowing researchers to see how it worked.^[6]

Operating System	Creator	Known viruses^[7]
AIX	IBM
AmigaOS	Amiga, Inc.	775
FreeBSD	The FreeBSD Project
HP-UX	Hewlett-Packard
i5/OS	IBM
IRIX	SGI
Inferno	Bell Labs
Linux	GNU Project, Linus Torvalds and al.	30
Mac OS	Apple Computer	4 - 63
Mac OS X	Apple Computer	0
Mac OS X Server	Apple Computer	0
MS-DOS	Microsoft
NetBSD	The NetBSD Project
NetWare	Novell
OpenBSD	The OpenBSD Project
OpenVMS	DEC (now HP)
OS/2	IBM and Microsoft
Palm OS	PalmSource, Inc.	4
PC-BSD	PC-BSD Software
Plan 9	Bell Labs
Symbian	Symbian	83
Solaris	Sun
Windows Server 2003	Microsoft
Windows	Microsoft	about 140.000
Windows Mobile	Microsoft	2
RISC OS	Acorn Computers, RISC OS Limited
ZETA	yellowTAB
STOP 6 / XTS-400	BAE Systems
ReactOS	ReactOS development team
Operating System	Creator	Known viruses

The role of software development

Because software is often designed with security features to prevent unauthorized use of system resources, many viruses must exploit software bugs in a system or application to spread. Software development strategies that produce large numbers of bugs will generally also produce potential exploits.

Anti-virus software and other preventative countermeasures

There are two common methods that an anti-virus software application uses to detect viruses. The first, and by far the most common method of virus detection is using a list of virus signature definitions. The disadvantage of this detection method is that users are only protected from viruses that pre-date their last virus definition update. The second method is to use a heuristic algorithm to find viruses based on common behaviors. This method has the ability to detect viruses that anti-virus security firms’ have yet to create a signature for.

Many users install anti-virus software that can detect and eliminate known viruses after the computer downloads or runs the executable. They work by examining the content heuristics of the computer's memory (its RAM, and boot sectors) and the files stored on fixed or removable drives (hard drives, floppy drives), and comparing those files against a database of known virus "signatures". Some anti-virus programs are able to scan opened files in addition to sent and received emails 'on the fly' in a similar manner. This practice is known as "on-access scanning." Anti-virus software does not change the underlying capability of host software to transmit viruses. There have been attempts to do this but adoption of such anti-virus solutions can void the warranty for the host software. Users must therefore update their software regularly to patch security holes. Anti-virus software also needs to be regularly updated in order to gain knowledge about the latest threats.

One may also prevent the damage done by viruses by making regular backups of data (and the Operating Systems) on different media, that are either kept unconnected to the system (most of the time), read-only or not accessible for other reasons, such as using different file systems. This way, if data is lost through a virus, one can start again using the backup (which should preferably be recent). If a backup session on optical media like cd and dvd is closed, it becomes read-only and can no longer be affected by a virus. Likewise, an Operating System on a live cd can be used to start the computer if the installed Operating Systems become unusable. Another method is to use different Operating Systems on different file systems. A virus is not likely to affect both. Data backups can also be put on different file systems. For example, Linux requires specific software to write to NTFS partitions, so if one does not install such software and uses a separate installation of MS Windows to make the backups on an NTFS partition (and preferably only for that reason), the backup should remain safe from any Linux viruses. Likewise, MS Windows can not read file systems like ext3, so if one normally uses MS Windows, the backups can be made on an ext3 partition using a Linux installation.

Recovery Methods

Once a computer has been compromised by a virus, it is usually unsafe to continue using the same computer without completely reinstalling the operating system. However, there are a number of recovery options that exist after a computer has a virus. These actions depend on severity of the type of virus.

Data Recovery

Virus Removal

One possibility on Windows XP is a tool known as System Restore, which restores the registry and critical system files to a previous checkpoint. Often a virus will cause a system to hang, and a subsequent hard reboot will render a system restore point from the same day corrupt. Restore points from previous days should work provided the virus is not designed to corrupt the restore files. Some viruses however, disable system restore and other important tools such as Task Manager and Command Prompt. Examples of viruses that do this would be CiaDoor. The bug in windows used to do this was that Windows gives different powers to users with Administrator user account type and limited user account types. Administrators have the option to disable the above mentioned tools from limited users for various reasons. The virus modifies the registry to do the same, except now it blocks all users from accessing the tools. When a infected tool activates it gives the message "Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator.", even if the user trying to open the program is the administrator.

Operating System Reinstallation

In the most extreme circumstances, the reinstallation of the operating system is required. To do this properly, the hard drive is completely erased and the operating system is installed from media known not to be infected. Important files should first be backed up, if possible, and separately scanned for infection before erasing the original hard drive and reinstalling the operating system.

25 Interesting Facts

2007-02-01T12:02:00.001+05:30

25 Interesting Facts

1. A vulture will never attack a human or animal that is moving.

2. About 75% of the people in the U.S. live on 2% land.

3. According to a recent survey, more Americans lose their virginity in June than any other month.

4. Adult Northwestern American Grizzly Bears can bite through steel as thick as one half inch.

5. After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.

6. All polar bears are left-handed.

7. Almonds are the oldest, most widely cultivated and extensively used nuts in the world.

8. Al Capone's business card said he was a furniture dealer.

9. Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world's garbage annually. On average, that's 3 pounds a day per person.

10. An ant's sense of smell is as good as a Dog's.

11. Abe Lincoln's mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Ms. Lincoln drank the milk.

12. According to Playboy, more women talk dirty during sex than men.

13. Americans drink over a billion pounds of coffee every year and around five million bottles of soda.

14. After they are roasted, and when the coffee beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.

15. Americans, on average, eat 18 acres of pizza in one day.

16. An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.

17. An elephant's trunk contains more than 50,000 muscles.

18. An eyelash lives about 5 months.

19. Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats.

20. According to Hammurabi's Code, the penalty for medical malpractice was to cut off the doctor's hands.

21. An Octopus has 3 hearts!

22. According to Playboy, more women talk dirty during sex than men.

23. A whale's penis is called a dork.

24. An ear of corn always has an even number of rows because of the genetic formula which divides the cells.

25. Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit: a total of 11 billion a year.

World Records

2007-02-01T12:00:00.000+05:30

What is billed as the world's largest weather vane sits on the shores of White Lake in Montague, Michigan. It's 48 feet tall with a 26-foot wind arrow and adorned with a 14-foot replica of a 19th-century Great Lakes schooner.

The world's largest coffee pot is located in Davidson, Saskatchewan. It measures 24 Feet(7.3 Meters) tall, is made of sheet metal and could hold 150,000 8 ounce cups of coffee.

The Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center is the largest bowling establishment in the world. It has 252 lanes and one very tired pinsetter.

The World's Largest Catsup Bottle stands proudly next to Route 159, just south of downtown Collinsville, Illinois. This unique 170 ft. tall water tower was built in 1949 by W.E. Caldwell Company for the G.S. Suppiger catsup bottling plant. In 1995, due to the efforts of the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group, this piece of local history was saved from demolition and beautifully restored to its original appearance.

The longest Monopoly game ever played was 1,680 hours long, that's 70 straight days!

The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long.

The highest wind velocity ever recorded in the United States was 231 miles per hour, on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1934.

Howard Kinsey and Mrs. R. Roark, during a game of tennis, batted the ball back and forth 2001 consecutive times.

The World's Largest yo-yo resides in the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico, California. Named "Big Yo," the 256-pound yo-yo is an exact scale replica of a Tom Kuhn "No Jive 3 in 1 Yo-Yo." Fifty inches tall and 31.5 inches wide, the yo-yo is made of California sugar pine, Baltic birch from the former USSR, and hardrock maple. It was first launched in San Francisco on October 13, 1979.

Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in the French language—823 words without a period.

The largest web-footed bird is the albatross.

On July 31, 1994, Simon Sang Sung of Singapore turned a single piece of dough into 8,192 noodles in 59.29 seconds!

At 12 years old, an African named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued everyday for 91 years.

Toronto, Ontario was home to the biggest swimming pool in the world in 1925. It held 2000 swimmers, and was 300ft x 75ft. It is still in operation.

In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks, but he planned for the long bike journey. He brought an extra tire and a spare heinie.

The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it, caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed, as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.

Shakespeare's most talkative character is Hamlet. None of his other characters have as many lines in a single play. (Falstaff, who appears in several plays, has more lines total).

The largest school in the world is a k-12 school in the Philippines, with an enrollment of about 25,000.

France had the first supermarket in the world. It was started by relatives of the people who started the Texas Big Bear supermarket chain.

If you walked the entire length of the China's Great Wall, you would be walking farther than the distance between New York City and Miami, Florida. The wall stretches for over 1,500 miles. The driving distance between New York and Miami is just over 1,250 miles. Provided you don't get lost.

In Muddy, Illinois, the post office measures only 7½ by 10½ feet, about the size of a garden shed. If it wasn't for a sign hanging above the door stating, "U.S. Post Office, Muddy, IL., 62965," finding the tiny, wooden building could be difficult. It is believed to be one of the smallest post offices in the United States.

Zaire is the world leader in cobalt mining, producing two-thirds of the world's cobalt supply.

The world's tallest mountains, the Himalayas, are also the fastest growing. Their growth - about half an inch a year — is caused by the pressure exerted by two of the earth's continental plates (the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate) pushing against one another.

The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1, 904 pounds.

Belgian driver Jenatzy was the first to reach a speed of over 100km/h in his electrically powered car 'La Jamais Contente' in 1899.

Never mind what you saw in the film "The Poseidon Adventure." The biggest wave on record, reported by a reliable source, was estimated to have attained a height of 112 feet. It was measured, at some distance, I hope, by a tanker traveling between Manila and San Diego in 1933. The wind was blowing at 70 mph at the time.

On December 15, 1998, the Mayer Kaplan Jewish Community Center in Skokie, Illinois attempted to set the inaugural world's record for largest number of dreidels to be spun at one time. At least 200 people were needed to set the record.

The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.

Linn's Stamp News is the world's largest weekly newspaper for stamp collectors.

The Bible is the number one shoplifted book in America.

Write ASCII Bar Scraps In Orkut

2007-02-01T11:57:00.000+05:30

Just drag the cursor from begining to the end position of each code and then copy the codes to the scrap space of your friends and submit, then see the wonders there....Enjoy.

Happy Birthday

[red][b]Happy Birthday![/red]

[silver]███[gold]█[/gold]██[gold]█[/gold]██[gold]█[/gold]██[gold]█[/gold]██[gold]█[/gold]███

[silver]███[navy]█[/navy]██[navy]█[/navy]██[navy]█[/navy]██[navy]█[/navy]██[navy]█[/navy]███

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[/link]

[red][[b]Best Regards-> Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/red]

Preview:-

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Code:-

Hug for you!
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[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/red]

Preview:-

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___█████[/RED]▓[RED]██[/RED]▓[RED]█████
_ _[/RED][RED]██[/RED]▓[RED]█████████[/RED]▓[RED]██[/RED]
[RED]_█████[/RED]▓[RED]████[/RED]▓[RED]██████
_ [/RED][RED]██[/RED]▓[RED]██████████[/RED]▓[RED]███
_[/RED][RED]█[/RED]▓[RED]███████████[/RED]▓[RED]████
_ ████[/RED]▓[RED]██████[/RED]▓[RED]████[/RED]
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[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link][/red]

Preview:-

A train full of LOVE...
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Code:-

[b]A train full of[red] LOVE[/red]

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Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link]

Preview:-

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Code:-

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█████████[yellow]█[/yellow][Gold]███[/Gold]████████
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[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

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Code:-

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[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

+++++++++++▄██▄+++++++++++
++▄██▄+++▄██████▄+++▄██▄++
+██████+██████████+██████+
+████████████████████████+
+███████ I LOVE YOU ██████+
++██████████████████████++
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Code:-

+++++++++++[yellow]▄██▄[/yellow]+++++++++++
++[yellow]▄██▄[/yellow]+++[yellow]▄██████▄[/yellow]+++[yellow]▄██▄[/yellow]++
+[yellow]██████[/yellow]+[yellow]██████████[/yellow]+[yellow]██████[silver]+
+[yellow]████████████████████████[/yellow]+
+[yellow]███████ [blue][b]I LOVE YOU[/blue][/b] [yellow]██████[silver]+
++[yellow]██████████████████████[/yellow]++
+++[yellow]████████████████████[/yellow]+++
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++[green]▄███▄[silver]+++++[maroon]██[/maroon]+++++[green]▄███▄[/green]++[silver]
+[green]███████[silver]++++[maroon]██[/maroon]++++[green]███████[/green]+[silver]
++[green]███████[silver]+++[maroon]██[/maroon]+++[green]███████[/green]++[silver]
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++++++[green]█████[silver]+[maroon]██[/maroon]+[green]█████[/green]++++++[silver]
++++++++[maroon]██████████[/maroon]++++++++
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

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Code:-

[b]Oi!!! [;)]
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[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link][/red]

Preview:-

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Code:-

[b]Good Morning!
[silver]
█[red]█[/red]█[red]██[/red]█[red]█[/red]
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[red]█████████[/red]
█[red]█[/red][yellow]████[/yellow]
█[orange]█[/orange][yellow]████[/yellow]█████████[yellow]██[/yellow]
██[yellow]█[/yellow][navy]█[/navy][yellow]███[/yellow]███████[yellow]███[/yellow]
█[orange]█[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]█████[yellow]█████[/yellow]
[red]███[/red][yellow]█████[/yellow]████[yellow]█████[/yellow]
[red]███[/red][yellow]██████████████[/yellow]
█[red]█[/red][yellow]██████████████[/yellow]
█[yellow]███████████████[/yellow]
█[yellow]██████[/yellow][gold]█[/gold][yellow]███[/yellow][gold]██[/gold][yellow]██[/yellow]
██[YELLOW]█████[/yellow][gold]█████[/gold][yellow]███[/yellow]
███[yellow]███████████[/yellow]
████[yellow]█████████[/yellow]
█████[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]█[/orange]
██████[orange]█[/orange]███[orange]█[/orange]
██████[orange]█[/orange]███[orange]█[/orange]
█████[orange]███[/orange]█[orange]███
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

Good Morning!!!

██████████████
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Code:-

[blue][b]Good Morning!!![/blue] [;)]

[silver]████████[orange]██████
[silver]███████[orange]███[yellow]███[orange]█[maroon]█
[silver]██████[orange]███[yellow]██[maroon]█[yellow]█[orange]█[maroon]█
[silver]██████[orange]███[yellow]████[orange]█
[silver]█[orange]██[silver]███[orange]█[yellow]█[orange]██[yellow]███[orange]█
███████[yellow]██[orange]█████
█[yellow]██[orange]█[yellow]█████████[orange]█
█[yellow]██[orange]█[yellow]█████████[orange]█
█[yellow]██[orange]██[yellow]███████[orange]██
██[yellow]███[orange]█[yellow]██████[orange]█
[orange]██[yellow]████[orange]█[yellow]████[orange]██
[orange]██[yellow]█████[orange]█████
[silver]█[orange]██[yellow]███████[orange]█
[silver]██[orange]████████
[silver]████[orange]████[maroon]█
[silver]█████[maroon]█[silver]██[maroon]█
[silver]█████[maroon]█[silver]█[maroon]████
[silver]████[maroon]████[/link]

[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link][/red]

Preview:-

██████████████████████████████
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Code:-

[blue]██████████████████████████████
████[red]████████[/red]██████[red]████████[/red]████
███[red]██████████[/red]████[red]██████████[/red]███
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███[red]████████████████████████[/red]███
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█████[red]████████████████████[/red]█████
██████[red]██████████████████[/red]██████
███████[red]████████████████[/red]███████
████████[red]██████████████[/red]████████
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███████████[red]████████[/red]███████████
████████████[red]██████[/red]████████████
█████████████[red]████[/red]█████████████
██████████████[red]██[/red]██████████████
██████████████████████████████
[red]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link][/red]

Preview:-

_________█████___________█████_
________████████________████████
_____███________███__███_______███
____███___________████___________███
___███_____________██_____________███
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Code:-

[silver]_________[red]█████[/red]___________[blue]█████[/blue]_
________[gold]████████[/gold]________[green]████████[/green]
_____[yellow]███[/yellow]________[teal]███[/teal]__[red]███[/red]_______[olive]███[/olive]
____[lime]███[/lime]___________[blue]████[/blue]___________[violet]███[/violet]
___[navy]███[/navy]_____________[red]██[/red]_____________[yellow]███[/yellow]
___[pink]███[/pink]_____________________________[purple]███[/purple]
___███____________________________[red]███[/red]
____[blue]███[/blue]___________________________[aqua]███[/aqua]
_____[gold]███[/gold]_________________________[green]███[/green]
______[red]███[/red]_______________________███
________[gold]███[/gold]___________________[red]███[/red]
__________███_______________[gold]███[/gold]
____________[teal]███[/teal]___________[lime]███[/lime]
_______________[pink]███[/pink]______[green]███[/green]
_________________[gold]████████
___________________[blue]████

[b]Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/blue]

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Code:-

[b]Click on the chick!

[link=http://orkutando.net/eng/reply.php][silver]██████[yellow]█[/yellow]██[yellow]█[/yellow]
█████[yellow]███████[/yellow]
████[yellow]█████████[/yellow]
████[yellow]██████████[/yellow]
███[yellow]████[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]██[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]████[/yellow]
███[yellow]████[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]██[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]████[/yellow]
███[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]██[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
███[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]██[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
████[yellow]██████████[/yellow]
█████[yellow]████████[/yellow]
[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]████████[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
█[yellow]███[/yellow][orange]██████████[/orange][yellow]███[/yellow]
██[yellow]██[/yellow][orange]██████████[/orange][yellow]██[/yellow]
████[orange]██████████[/orange]
█████[orange]████████[/orange]
██████[maroon]█[/maroon]████[maroon]█[/maroon]
██████[maroon]█[/maroon]████[maroon]█[/maroon][/silver]
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

█████████████████
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Code:-

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[silver]████[olive]███[silver]███████[olive]███
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[silver]██[olive]████████████████
[silver]██[olive]███████████████
[silver]███[olive]█████████████
[silver]████[olive]████[maroon]█[olive]████[maroon]█[olive]██
[silver]████[olive]████████████
[silver]████[olive]███████[maroon]█[olive]████
[silver]█████[olive]██████████
[silver]██████[olive]████████
[silver]██████[blue]████████
[silver]███[olive]███[red]███[olive]████[red]███[olive]█
[silver]██[olive]███[red]█████[olive]██[red]█████[olive]█
[silver]█[olive]███[red]██████████████[olive]██
[silver]█[olive]███[red]██████████████[olive]██
[silver]█[olive]████[red]████████████[olive]███
[silver]███[olive]███[red]██████████[olive]██
[silver]█[olive]██████[red]████████[olive]████
██[maroon]██[olive]█████[red]████[olive]███[maroon]██[olive]██
█[maroon]████[olive]█████[red]██[olive]███[maroon]████[olive]█
██[maroon]██[olive]████████████[maroon]██[olive]██
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

██████████████████
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Code:-

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[silver]████████[gold]█████[gray]█[gold]████
[silver]███████[gold]██████[gray]█[gold]███
[silver]██████[gold]███████[gray]█[gold]██
[silver]██████[gold]██████[gray]█[gold]██
[silver]███████[gold]████[gray]█[gold]██
[silver]████████[gold]██[gray]█[gold]██[silver]█[violet]█
[silver]██████[teal]███████[violet]█[yellow]█[violet]█
[silver]█████[teal]███[gray]█████[silver]█[violet]█
[silver]████[teal]████[gray]██████[teal]█[pink]█
[silver]███[teal]█████[gray]██████[teal]█[pink]█
[silver]██[teal]███████[gray]█████[teal]█[pink]█
[silver]█[teal]███████████
████████████
[silver]█[teal]███████████
[silver]██[teal]██████████
[silver]███[aqua]█[teal]████████
[silver]████[aqua]█[teal]███████
[silver]█████[aqua]██[teal]█████
[silver]██████[pink]████
[silver]██████[pink]████
[silver]██████[gray]████
[silver]██████[gray]███[maroon]███
[silver]██████[maroon]██████
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b][/link][/red]

Preview:-

Peace and Love ♥!

██████████
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Code:-

[B]Peace and Love[red]♥[/red]![silver]
██████[yellow]█[/yellow]██[yellow]█[/yellow]
█████[yellow]███████[/yellow]
████[yellow]█████████[/yellow]
████[yellow]██████████[/yellow]
███[yellow]████[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]██[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]████[/yellow]
███[yellow]████[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]██[/yellow][aqua]█[/aqua][yellow]████[/yellow]
███[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]██[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
███[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]██[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
████[yellow]██████████[/yellow]
█████[yellow]████████[/yellow]
[yellow]█████[/yellow][orange]████████[/orange][yellow]█████[/yellow]
█[yellow]███[/yellow][orange]██████████[/orange][yellow]███[/yellow]
██[yellow]██[/yellow][orange]██████████[/orange][yellow]██[/yellow]
████[orange]██████████[/orange]
█████[orange]████████[/orange]
██████[maroon]█[/maroon]████[maroon]█[/maroon]
██████[maroon]█[/maroon]████[maroon]█[/maroon][/silver][/b]
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

██████████████████
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Code:-

[b]Have a Great day!

[silver]
██████████████████
████████[maroon]█[/maroon][blue]███[/blue]██████
████████[maroon]█[/maroon][blue]███[/blue]██████
████████[maroon]█[/maroon]█████████
█████[orange]█[/orange]██[maroon]█[/maroon][orange]█[/orange]████████
█████[orange]█[/orange][gold]█[/gold]█[maroon]█[/maroon][gold]██[/gold]███████
████[orange]██[/orange][gold]██[/gold][maroon]█[/maroon][orange]███[/orange]██████
██[gold]██[/gold][orange]██[/orange][gold]██[/gold][maroon]█[/maroon][gold]█████[/gold]████
█[orange]█[/orange][gold]██[/gold][orange]██[/orange][gold]██[/gold][maroon]█[/maroon][orange]██████[/orange]███
█[orange]█[/orange][gold]██[/gold][orange]██[/orange][gold]██[/gold][maroon]█[/maroon][gold]███████[/gold]██
████████[maroon]█[/maroon]█████████
█[maroon]███████████████[/maroon]██
██[maroon]█████████████[/maroon]███[/silver]
[aqua]███[maroon]███████████[/maroon]████
██████████████████[/aqua]

Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b]

Preview:-

Just saying HI

█████████
██████████
██████████
█████████████████
███████████████████
████████████████████
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█████████████████
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████████████████

Code:-

[b]Just saying HI

[silver]
████[navy]█████[/navy]
███[navy]███████[/navy]
██[navy]██[/navy][maroon]█[/maroon][aqua]█[/aqua][navy]████[/navy]
[gold]██[/gold][navy]██[/navy][aqua]██[/aqua][navy]███████████[/navy]
██[aqua]█[/aqua][navy]████████████████[/navy]
███[aqua]█[/aqua][navy]████████████████[/navy]
███[aqua]██[/aqua][navy]█████████████████[/navy]
████[aqua]██[/aqua][navy]██████████████████[/navy]
█████[aqua]███[/aqua][navy]███████████[/navy][silver]██[/silver][navy]████[/navy]
██████[aqua]████[/aqua][navy]████████[/navy][silver]██████[/silver][navy]██[/navy]
████████[aqua]████[/aqua][navy]█████[/navy][silver]█████████[/silver][navy]██[/navy]
███████████[aqua]██████[/aqua]
████████████[gold]█[/gold]█[gold]█[/gold]
███████████[maroon]█████[/maroon][/silver]

Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta[/b]

Preview:-

███████████████
████████████████
████████████████
████████████████████████████████
████████████████████████████████
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Code:-

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[gray]████[/gray]██████[gray]█[/gray]████
[gray]█████[/gray]██[gray]███[/gray]█[gray]████[/gray]█
[gray]██[/gray]█████[gray]███[/gray]█[gray]████[/gray]█
[gray]█[/gray]█[orange]███[/orange]█[gray]█████[/gray]█[gray]██[/gray]██████████████████
█[orange]████[/orange]█[gray]████[/gray]██[gray]██[/gray]██[orange]████[/orange]████████████
██[orange]███[/orange]█[gray]████[/gray]██[gray]██[/gray]██[orange]█████[/orange]██████████
██[orange]████[/orange]█[gray]███[/gray]████[orange]████████[/orange]████████
███[orange]████[/orange]████[orange]█████████████[/orange]█████
██[gray]█[/gray]█[orange]████████████████████████[/orange]█
██[gray]█[/gray]█[orange]███████████████████████[/orange]█
██[gray]██[/gray]█[orange]█████[/orange]███[orange]████████████[/orange]█
██[gray]██[/gray]█[orange]██████[/orange]████[orange]████████[/orange]██
███[gray]█[/gray]█[orange]█████[/orange]█[gray]███[/gray]█████████
███[gray]█[/gray]█[orange]█████[/orange]█

Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

Preview:-

Just 2 say Hello!

████████████
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Code:-

[b]Just 2 say Hello!

████[red]██████[/red]██
███[red]███[/red]█[silver]██[/silver]█[silver]█[/silver]█
███[red]███[/red]█[silver]██[/silver]█[silver]█[/silver]█
██[red]████[/red]██[silver]█[/silver]██[silver]█[/silver]█
██[red]████[/red]████████
█[red]████[/red]██[pink]███████[/pink]█
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██[red]██[/red]█[pink]██[/pink]█[pink]██████████████[/pink]█
███[red]█[/red]█[pink]██[/pink]█[pink]██████████████[/pink]██
███[red]██[/red]█[pink]██[/pink]█[pink]███████████[/pink]█[pink]██[/pink]█
████[red]█[/red]█[pink]███[/pink]█[pink]██████████[/pink]█[pink]█[/pink]█
█████[red]█[/red]█[pink]███[/pink]█[pink]██████████[/pink]█
██████[red]████████[/red]███████
███████[red]███████[/red]█
████████[red]██████[/red]█
Best Regards->Tanmoy Sen Gupta

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File-Destructive Trojans

Denial of Service Trojans

Proxy/Wingate Trojans

FTP Trojans

Software Detection Killers

Worms

Classification

Boot sector virus

Companion virus

E-mail virus

Logic bomb

Macro virus

Cross-site scripting virus

Sentinels

Trojan horse

Worm

Effects of computer viruses

Use of the word "virus"

History

Why people create computer viruses

Replication strategies

Nonresident viruses

Resident viruses

Host types

Methods to avoid detection

Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts

Stealth

[edit] Self-modification

Simple self-modifications

Encryption with a variable key

Polymorphic code

Metamorphic code

Vulnerability and countermeasures

The vulnerability of operating systems to viruses

The role of software development

Anti-virus software and other preventative countermeasures

Recovery Methods

Data Recovery

Virus Removal

Operating System Reinstallation

25 Interesting Facts

World Records

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