Episode 17 - Anti-Virus Companies Do Not Write Viruses!

In this episode your Field Commander Global Bob gives some history of viruses and anti-virus companies.  He also gives some very alarming stats on viruses and cyber crime.

Transcripts are automatically generated.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Wowright, are right all aboard the

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global Bob Show. This is yourfield commander global Bob, and
I am broadcasting from the veryhigh tech, very beautiful
Richard hook broadcast facility.
This is such a wonderfulfacility here. It's very high

(00:30):
tech. And what's really neatabout the broadcast facility is
that we don't require any powerto be able to broadcast. As many
of y'all know, I am an avidamateur radio operator. And so
very easily, we can broadcastworldwide from here using our

(00:55):
amateur radio. And as far as thepower is concerned, we have a
nice about 4600 watts of solarthat we can utilize to power the
equipment. And if the internetis not up and going by my

(01:15):
provider, I have a backupcircuit couple of backup
circuits here, one of which isStarlink, which is a very
amazing product by theillustrious Elon Musk. And so we
can really, you know, get thisshow out, no matter what I feel

(01:35):
like we can. Now some of y'allmay have noticed that last week,
the show did not come out onSpotify, or out on Apple
podcast. The reason for thedelay in the show was not
because of the situation insidethe broadcast facility. But it

(02:02):
was the situation with the broadcast store. That is me Globalbob
It appears that I had my luckrun out. And I come down with
the China virus or as it isscientifically known COVID Nine

(02:24):
teen and it was just bad timing.
I usually record this showduring the weekend. So that's
usually on Saturday or Sunday.
And at the latest record is onMonday. But I was at a family
event. Everything was goingwell. This was on Saturday, and

(02:46):
there was a lot of festivitiesand jubilation. But I kind of
felt like I was gettingoverheated because I was outside
cruising on my also wonderfulone will and my little brother
was on the one wheel for thefirst time. So we'll probably

(03:08):
talk a little bit about thatbecause it does have a
technology and political subjectmatter that we can talk about.
And I kind of felt like I gotoverheated. So I came inside,
sat down did not fill well. Anda couple of my family members
said hey, I think you getCoronavirus. Well, lo and

(03:31):
behold, I got home Saturdayevening. And my wife who is my
chief medical officer, she gaveme one of the COVID-19 test the
antigen test as it is referredto and I come back positive for

(03:53):
COVID 19 which I had a good run.
This was the first time I hadcome down with COVID 19. And so
it was all new for me but by thetime it hit me was on Sunday and

(04:14):
into Monday and therefore duringmy prime recording. I did not
get a chance to record the show.
I will say I am very honored andvery thankful for all my fans
and listeners because instantlyit was on Tuesday evening I

(04:39):
started getting phone calls andtext messages from those that
must have not got word that Iwas down with the China virus.
And they were pretty concernedabout me because they noticed
that Spotify and Apple Music andwhatever directories they use

(05:00):
They did not get their alertabout the Globalbob show. And so
I got some phone calls, which Ididn't answer, I just texted
back and some Facebook messagesand stuff. So really glad that
you all look forward to theGlobalbob show. So as always,
thank you, everybody who tunesin every week, I think everybody

(05:21):
that subscribes to the show, andespecially those that ask
somebody to subscribe. Sotechnically, the Globalbob show
could have happened, probablywould have sounded like a robot
or had a frog in my throat. Andso it was a physical problem

(05:42):
that kept the show from comingout. So with that said, I
promise, the goal is to put outone show per week. And after a
year, hopefully we have 52 showsout. So my promise to the
listeners, we will come up witha makeup show. So if you would
like to subscribe to the show,you can do it through any of the

(06:04):
major directories, you can getthe show directly from the site,
the global Bob Show, you canreach me on Twitter at Globalbob
show. And you can also look atthe Facebook page by searching
Globalbob show.
All right, well, that brings usto the topic of today. So I was

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I was laying in bed thinkingabout what show I wanted to put
on and been infected with theChina virus. I decided that I
wanted to address a question Iget all the time. And that is do
antivirus companies. Now this iscomputer antivirus. But you

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know, probably some people thinkother antiviral companies do the
same thing. But the show is doantivirus companies make
viruses. And we will unpack thesubject, and explore all the
different areas of the subjectmatter and give you a little bit

(07:10):
of history of viruses andantivirus companies. So stay
tuned as we address this. Sobefore we dive in too deep here,
we need to put some definitionsaround a few terms. Now most of
you have heard of trojans,viruses, and worms. And together

(07:34):
they're called malware. Butthere are differences between
the various groups here. So avirus think of a virus as
something that needs a host,just like a virus in your body,
just like Coronavirus in mybody. It needed a host. And so a

(07:57):
virus infects other programs. Soif you get your computer
infected with a virus, a lot oftimes it injects itself inside
of a program that it knows theuser will run. So that's a
virus. A worm is kind of like avirus. And these are probably

(08:19):
the two that get confused mostoften. And a worm is something
that self propagates. See avirus requires the user to
propagate it, whether it'sthrough a thumb drive, or a
piece of media, you know, that'show a virus propagates but a

(08:39):
worm it has all the mechanismsto propagate itself. So
commonly, worms when they'redownloaded onto a computer at
your company, then the the wormwill start looking for other
computers or devices on thenetwork, and then it will

(08:59):
replicate to them. Also wormswill try to replicate itself
through your email program. Sothat's the difference between a
virus and a worm. Now a Trojanjust like in the Greek
mythology, the Trojan horse. ATrojan is a piece of malware

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that takes and disguises itselfto carry a payload. Now all of
these can kind of workinterchangeably. And so to they
during this show, when we usethe word, virus, just know that
we're kind of talking about themalware group. So there you go.
Now you know the differencebetween a virus and a worm when

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did the first virus come out?
Well, this is a little bitmurky, because during the time
when computers were stoppedLearning to become actually
known was back in the late 60sand early 70s. And these
computers were very, very largesystems. They were nothing like

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what we have today, oneparticular computer, it's called
ENIAC, and ENIAC was about thesize of a few city blocks. So
you got to think in those terms,when the first virus came out,
and the first virus, that prettymuch everybody in industry says

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was the first virus was calledthe creeper virus or creeper
program. And it came out in1971. And it was by a guy named
Bob Thomas. And creeper was moreof kind of a proof of concept to
see if he could make somethingthat could self replicate. So in

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this case, this is kind of likea worm, right, we talked about
worms, their main job is toreplicate themselves. But in
this particular one, it didn'tdo anything malicious, it just
went from computer to computer,and it would display a message
calledI'm the creeper Catch Me If You

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Can. So no malicious intent, itwas just something that was more
of a proof of concept, but thatwas in 1971. So there was no
internet at the time, if therewas persistent storage, or what
would later become the harddrive, it was only a few bytes
or so. So that was the firstone. So Bob Thomas 1971, with

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his creeper virus. So the firstone that came out, that actually
had malicious intent would be afew years later. And that virus
was called the rabbit virus. Andthat was in 1974. And what the

(12:06):
rabbit virus did was, it wouldget on to a computer, and then
it would simply just replicateitself until it crashed the
system. And I'm not sure who theactual author was behind that.
But it was just the one thatgoes down in history as one of

(12:31):
the first that had the actualmalicious intent. So that's on
the viruses. Now, the firstTrojan, remember, the Trojan is
something that carriesa payload. And that would go
down in history by guy namedJohn Walker, Johnnie Walker. So
the name of the Trojan that hecreated in 1974, was called

(12:56):
animal. Now back in the 70s,there was a game that came out.
And it was basically to show thedegrees of separation amongst
animals. And so you could takeand it would ask you a series of
questions about animals. And youwould flip through the pages of

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the book, and it would saysomething like, has long ears,
and you would flip to page 36.
And it says, has fur, and youwould flip to page 18. And so
there was something that waswritten down. So this guy
decided John Walker, that hewould create a Trojan called

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animal that would ask you thosesame questions on the computer
screen, and it would tell youwhat animal you're thinking of.
And so it could do this in 20questions. But what he also did
was have this as a Trojan thatinstalled a

(14:06):
piece of software calledpervade. And all purveyed would
do was copy the animal programinto every directory on the
system. So, you know, a lot ofpeople don't even realize about
directories on systems anymore,because it's been so abstracted.
But for those of us that getinto computers early now, I

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mean, this animal was back in1975, which is about four years
before I was even born. But weunderstood with Windows 3.31,
and with Macintosh that you hadthese directories and so if you
had 1000 directories on yourcomputer, then Johnnie Walker

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there John Walker's Trojan wouldcopy animal to each and every
directory. So that was the basictheme in the 70s it
It was these worms and virusesand Trojans, they were more like
proof of concept code, theyweren't not necessarily
malicious. And if they were,they were kinda kind of benign.

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Now, fast forward to 1986. Now Iwas in first grade in 1986. And
that's when I kind of feel likeviruses started to mature. And
they started having more of apurpose than just to prove that
they can replicate themselves.
And so the first stealthbootloader type virus now

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getting, you know, into the moresophisticated viruses that we
know of today was in 1986. Andthere was two brothers beset and
Fogra. I'm sure I messed up thatlast name there, but two
brothers Bissette and fro GWA.

(16:00):
And they were both young folks.
Bissette was 17. And his brotherprogra was 24. And they
developed this heart monitoringsoftware. Now, these were two
Pakistani brothers. And they hada heart monitoring software. And
they noticed that on some forumsand other areas that their virus

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was being pirated. And so theseillegal copies of their program
were being made, which meansthat they were not being
compensated for their program.
So what they did was was made avirus that would display a

(16:43):
number to call to getinoculated. And I think that's
kind of cool, because, you know,going up into these times, it
was a malicious program. So howdid we get to call it a virus?
How do we get to call it thesedifferent definitions? Where did
those definitions come from?
Well, I like to think thatprobably the virus was called a

(17:04):
virus because the brothers had anumber that said, call this
number to get inoculated. Andthat was really cool. But the
brothers would later go on, andeven today, they're still
active. Now they're not virusriders. But they own a ISP,
internet service provider inPakistan. And they actually own

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the largest ISP in Pakistan. Andthat is called Brain net. And so
the name of their virus was thebrain virus.
Well, here's when things startto shift. So now we have our
first bootloader virus. And sothe people at Big Blue, also

(17:54):
known as IBM, they write thefirst anti virus. And at that
time, IBM was the leader in allthings, computers, and they had
big research facilities and bigstaff. And really, IBM was a
huge player all the way throughthe 80s 90s, early 2000s. But

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now, in today's times, probablya lot of kids have never even
heard of an IBM computer. Butanything that was with computers
was almost always coming out ofIBM, which this virus was
released in 1986. It will be1987. When the first antivirus

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companies are formed now, like Isaid, IBM started writing an
anti virus software, but thefirst antivirus company would be
in 1987. And actually a wholehost of companies would start
jumping on to this virusbandwagon. But the first company
was McAfee and if you guys arefamiliar with John McAfee in his

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later life, you know that he wasquite the eccentric person. So
in 1987, we got McAfee. Also in1987, a company out of Germany
called G data. They got to theantivirus software and another
one called EA set.
Also in 1987, which is kind ofcool because these companies are

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still around in variouscapacities. And then in the next
year, here comes some moreonline company called a Vera and
then another company called avast which was out of the Czech
Republic. And then we got a nonlab which was from South Korea.

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In 1988. Also came Dr. Solomon'santi virus out of the UK Sophos
out of EnglandKaspersky out of Russia, F
product from Iceland 1989 alsobrought us Symantec. No notice I
said Symantec, and not Norton, Iknow that people use the two
interchangeably. But they weretwo different companies, and

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Symantec came first 1990 broughtus Panda 9090 also brought us
Trend Micro. And then we alsohad Norton in 1991. And that
kind of rounds out your top 15companies. And just looking at
this list, I had the distincthonor of working very much in

(20:38):
the trenches with Symantec,Norton, and also Albarran. And
it's just really neat to knowthat all of a sudden, all of
these companies started beingformed to combat the rise of
viruses. So before thecompanies, when they would form

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the software companies, theywere usually coming together to
make a killer application, likeMicrosoft Word, or IBM's, os two
warp kind of date myself bytalking about IBM OS two warp,
but I did have that installedone time. But these companies

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were being formed strictly toprotect computers from viruses.
And if you see the rise of thiskind of the what I feel like is,
is that as computers started tobecome officially connected,
because in the 80s, we hadARPANET, which came out of

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DARPA. And not everybody wasconnected to the internet like
they are today. So it seems likeas the connectivity of home
computers and computers ingeneral started to become
formalized through internetservice providers, well, there
was a rise in viruses. Andtherefore these companies were

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kind of trying to play catch up.
So cruising right along, I'llgive you some stats, and why
these companies don't need towrite their own viruses. Now,
I've mentioned that I've workedwith Norton, Vera, and Symantec.

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And whenever I was involved withNorton slash Symantec, they
were, you know, one company, andof course, now they've been
split back out again. But thething is, is that there's so
many anti viruses being writtenby cyber criminals, by nation
states from all around theworld, that there's just so much

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out there that the antiviruscompanies do not need to write
viruses themselves. Moreover,any virus that is written, it's
a quasi gray area, whether itcauses destruction or steals
data or not, of course, if itdoes cause destruction and steal
data, then it is illegal. Sothese companies are not going to

(23:17):
be engaged in illegal activityto promote their via anti virus
software. They don't need it.
And I'll tell you the reasonwhy. Because here's some stats
that according to safetydetective.com That shows that
the companies already have avery hungry market that wants to

(23:40):
stay safe. Do you believe that70% of Americans worry about
their personal data beingstolen? That's kind of a high
number. But did you know thatthe same Americans that were
polled only 24% of them worryabout terrorism. So you can see
that very quickly. 70% of thepeople are more worried about

(24:06):
their personal data and databeing stolen than what they are
terrorism. Now, we can all restassured that the de facto
standard for word processing andpresentations and all of that is
Microsoft Office, and MicrosoftOffice is still the primary
attack point for malware.

(24:31):
Remember, malware is acollection of Trojans viruses is
kind of an umbrella term, butMicrosoft Office is the one that
is most attacked and really 38%of malware is attacking or using
Microsoft Word to propagate.
Now, why do these criminals,right, all of these viruses and

(24:55):
Trojans and all of that becauseIt is simply a big business.
It's been speculated that NorthKorea is getting money from the
world market via cryptocurrencyvia ransomware. And whenever I
say it's big business, do youknow that companies will pay

(25:17):
almost $11.5 billion andransomware? We hear about
ransomware all the time. Andpeople think, well, who the heck
pays that? Well, they do.
Like I said, it's $11.5 billionindustry. And the total cost of

(25:39):
cybercrime is in the range of $2trillion.
Now, by 2025, they speculatethat it will be a $6 trillion
price tag. And that's what itcost to fight cybercrime and
fight all these viruses off. Sovery big business on both sides,

(26:02):
you have the criminals that arecreating these different
variants of malware, then youhave the antivirus companies
that are trying to stop thisfrom propagating. Now something
that we do see is is that oncecrypto became mainstream, like
Bitcoin, well as that price ofBitcoin started go up, or any

(26:28):
cryptocurrency or cryptojacking, started to spike along
with it, which would make sense.
And what crypto jacking is, iswhen you go to a site, and your
computer downloads either viaTrojan or some other mechanism,
and your computer's actuallystarting to generate Bitcoin
very, very small amounts. Andmatter of fact, it's usually not

(26:53):
Bitcoin. It's a type ofcryptocurrency called mo narrow,
because Manero is more optimizedfor CPU. So we'll talk about
more about that later. But justknow that as the value of
cryptocurrency goes up, so doescrypto jacking. Now, when we
talk about the virus companies,the antivirus companies needing

(27:17):
to get samples. I mean, there'sa whole host of them out there.
But did you know that 24,000malicious apps are blocked each
and every day. Now a maliciousapplication can need to be on a
cell phone, whether it's iOS, orAndroid, or even application on

(27:38):
your computer, but about 24,000of them are blocked each day.
Now, when there's someinformation and polls that were
done, it was found that about70% of folks aren't even
prepared, if they were to have alights out situation at their

(28:00):
office, or on their computer attheir house. So you can see that
the market is ripe, you gotcyber criminals that are trying
to exploit computers, you gotantivirus companies that are
trying to stay ahead, and 70% ofthe people aren't even prepared.
So that means that if you're notprepared, and your computer

(28:22):
downloads a piece of ransomware,that means you're probably more
likely to either pay thatransom. So that's where we're
seeing a arms race. Now, howdoes all this get delivered? I
mean, we've talked about virusesand Trojans and all of that,
while still, the de factostandard for delivering the

(28:44):
malware is still via email. AndI know we said over and over and
over, just be careful with thoselinks that you click on. If it's
too good to be true, you know,maybe taken, try to get a hold
of the sender. See if it'slegit. A lot of times when the

(29:04):
email comes through, we callthat phishing. And what they
need to do is get you to clickon something, or get you to not
have antivirus installed so theycan land and expand. You hear
that all the time in ourbusiness land and expand. And so
they know that email is triedand true, people will click on

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it a lot of times and that's howthe viruses get onto your
computer. So that's calledphishing. Another way they do it
because a lot of us are loggedin to our I messages on our Macs
is called smishing which is SMSphishing. And that's where they

(29:47):
send you messages saying clickhere your Amazon package is on
its way. So just know that thebest way to protect yourself is
be careful with stuff you clickon via
An email. And I don't know wherethey get this number from, but
they say 76% of cybercrime is tomake money. I don't know if they

(30:11):
put a poll out and ask criminalsif they could respond to it. But
a lot of times the stuff thatmakes the news and the big
headlines is this nation state.
The Chinese government ishacking the US government and
vice versa. But that is what wecall state sponsored or nation
state 76% Of all the Cybercrimeout there, which that would be

(30:34):
considered a cybercrime is tomake money. Now 75% of consumers
think their data is not safe. Sothat's another good stat there.
So 70% aren't prepared 75% thinktheir data is not safe. So the
antivirus companies, they knowthat they already have a

(30:58):
customer because they customerno 75% says their data is not
safe. And the best way to secureyour data is to start with good
antivirus.
Now, here's one, that's prettysad. And this would be the last
stat I'll leave you with. Andthat is 60% of cybercrime. And

(31:23):
this ransomware targets smallbusinesses. Now, why would they
want to target small businesses?
Well, if they go after a bigbusiness, chances are those big
businesses, they have backups,they have very formal network
operations teams, they have verymature capabilities. And also,

(31:45):
they submit any virus samples,they get to the antivirus
companies. And so thecybercriminal going after a big
business, then there's a chancethat they're probably going to
get detected, and there's goingto be an antivirus signature

(32:06):
written that's going totake that virus and eradicate it
from all computers. So what theytarget is, is the small
business, the mom and popbusinesses, the ones that may
think that, hey, it's betterjust to pay $1,000 to get the
ransomware key to unlock all myfiles. And so that's really sad.

(32:30):
Just like when I've beeninvolved in certain activity,
that we were able to compromiseATM machines as a proof of
concept strictly sanctionedaboveboard proof of concept.
Well, those ATM machines, theones that were the easiest
compromised were the ATMmachines that were normally used

(32:52):
at Mom and Pop gas stations. Andthat's the part that's really
sad is is because of you know, alot of your large businesses,
they have cyber insurance. Andlike I said, they have very
robust capabilities. But youknow, the cyber criminal if he
can go after the small business,the one two computers, and maybe
the real estate broker, that'sa, you know, a single person

(33:16):
shop, then they'll just pay it.
So that's really sad that 60% ofthese are specifically targeting
small businesses. Well, so we'recoming up on the bottom of the
half hour. And I just wanted togive you kind of the history of

(33:36):
viruses and anti viruses, andkind of explain where all of
this came from, and then tellyou that no, antivirus companies
do not write viruses to try toget people to buy their product,
as demonstrated with a wholeplethora of stats and figures,

(33:58):
that that is not needed, justsimply not needed, because
there's so much of it out there.
And it's only going to getworse. I mean, who would have
thought that this would be a $6trillion. That's 6 trillion with
a tea industry. Just amazing.

(34:18):
Well, I like to thank everybodythat tunes in each and every
week, sorry for not yam for notgetting the podcast out last
week. But as I mentioned, we'llmake it up to you. So everybody,
stay safe. Sanitize your hands.
Wear your mask when you'rearound water people, if that's
what makes you more comfortable.

(34:43):
And just everybody be safe. Andkeep yourself from getting the
COVID bars and keep your laptop,desktop, iPad, iPhone or Android
from getting any of the otherviruses that are out there. And
withIf this is your build commander
global boss I will see you allnext week