so, im not the most technology savvy guy, i know my way around some programs but you know, average. i was listening to a lecture about viruses and it caught my attention.
the speaker was talking about people out there (in the internet world) who make worms and viruses etc. and release them into the internet, which brings about my 1st question?
1: how do people even get worms into the internet, now, i know it may seem childish but when i hear that i imagine a worm as being like an airborne virus, the internet being all the air and your random searching being you accidentally running into it while going through a DNS or whatever? so, i know that’s not right, the internet is just light being sent through a cable and being read as 1’s and 0’s and that makes your computer interpret the data and display it, so, how do people get worms in?
okay, going past that, im always curious as to how these things go about doing what they do, its as if the virus has artificial intelligence of logic algorithms??? how can a worm (once again, my mental image) sneak into your computer and hack stuff in a sense so
2: how do worms (viruses etc.) actually get into your computer and hack things, do they just go for random things that every computer has? what if you have some new OS, then would this virus be useless, just pointless data sitting in your computer unable to do anything?
the third thing that was brought up was that once in 07 i believe, microsoft discovered a MASSIVE vulnerability in their DNS servers or something like that, and any would-be hacker could exploit, now, it just ended there, exploit. to do what?
3: if some hacker got into say, Microsoft’s DNS servers, how and, what would they even do?
there as one thing, final one, the speaker said the two of the main 13 servers that make up the backbone of the internet got hacked and severely damaged, running at 20% capacity so.
4: first, i always thought the internet was just all the computers connected together, so… yahoo for an example has their servers, and when we go to yahoo, we are in their servers, and if more people come, they need more servers etc. etc. what are these 13 main servers, who owns them, where are thither? what are their importance?
4.1: also, how could someone hack one of them, all i imagined it being was a HUB, like the center of a mall, there’s nothing to steal there, its just a gate way for making things more organized? what would you hack?
4.2: how do these things get past security, in fact… how does security work??? i imagine it being like a border for getting onto a country (you computer or other networks) the security knows whats legit and lets it pass, and whatever looks suspicious, gets kicked back into the pool or desert internet. how do things get past? are some viruses like airborne real life viruses, and they just "slip through" with no way of stopping them?
4.3: if all this is possible then why don’t (me assuming this makes sense) we (the gov.) just make worms that seek and destroy all this bad software, just make worms that know what should and shouldn’t be and you know, delete them (once again, me trying to make sense)
5:perhaps the least tech required question, why do these people do it, why make problems and viruses, why?