Editors/translators Foreword

Abstract

In the beginning, there was bureaucracy. I had tried to get major AV companies to give me malware samples to study in an academic setting, but to no avail: Liability reasons, and their suggestion-trekking back and forth to their corporate 'clean' room-was unpalatable to me. I like flat hierarchies, so I turned to herm1t. Herm1t runs (singlehandedly, with minimal equipment and funds) the labour of love known as vxheavens (http://vx.netlux.org), a full-spectrum site dedicated to computer viruses. As quid pro quo, I sent him historical papers he sought for his collection. One title, though, seemed out of reach: A German 1980 MSc thesis by some fellow named Juergen Kraus. A hefty Dortmund package arrived late October 2006. I was quite pleased. After almost a year of unsuccessful attempts through US academic institutions' Intra Library Loan program, I had the epiphany to contact the computer science librarian at the University of Dortmund, Peter Kleffmann. He managed to locate the sole remaining public copy of the thesis-adding an air of mystery to this trouvaille, it was found stashed away in a vault. I skimmed the thesis :Over two hundred pages on the topic of self-reproducing programs, yet set on a mechanical typewriter, chockfull with hand-edited mathematical formulae and notation, Siemens assembly and SIMULA code. I could not fend off

Analogical reasoning and cyber security

“…Notions of adaptation and fitness are also drawn directly from the biological sciences. As Kraus’s translators note, in his early experiments on viruses, he ‘had them compete for resources – complete with mutations and crossovers and fitness functions’ (Bilar and Filliol, 2009: 2).…”

“…The way in which these analogies operate is slightly different from how the epidemiological approach functions, and they present alternative opportunities for the security professional and the policymaker. Kraus’s early experiments with viruses occurred within a ‘digital biotope’ (Bilar and Filliol, 2009: 2). A ‘biotope’ is ‘an environmentally uniform region of a habitat, occupied by a particular biological community’.…”

“… 10. Although the first known use of the term and concept of a computer virus was by Gregory Benford in 1970. See Bilar and Filliol (2009: 2n1); Benford (2011). …”