--Originally published at Computer Security
Software encryption
Software encryption programs are more prevalent than hardware solutions today. As they can be used to protect all devices within an organization, these solutions can be cost effective as well as easy to use, upgrade and update. Software encryption is readily available for all major operating systems and can protect data at rest, in transit, and stored on different devices. Software-based encryption often includes additional security features that complement encryption, which cannot come directly from the hardware.
But encryption is moving to lower levels (hardware, quantum, etc.). Main reason, software encryption is vulnerable for brute force attacks, this is basically bombing the system with passwords until one hits; computer tries to limit the number of decryption attempts but hackers can access the computer’s memory and reset the attempt counter, sad thing. Even so, cryptography -as technology- is being developed continuously, unless is to protect government, military or enterprises, software encryption is more or less enough, most of us are not worthy enough to be attacked.
Dark applications
The idea of self encrypting polymorphic viruses gained popularity in the early 1990’s and brought to life generators of polymorphic code – in early 1992 the famous “Dedicated” virus appears, based on the first known polymorphic generator MtE and the first in a series of MtE-viruses; shortly after that there appears the polymorphic generator itself. Polymorphic viruses are a kind which modifies themselves every time they make a copy; imagine you have a plague of cockroaches and you have to use a different insecticide for every single one, fortunately anti-viruses are complex as well.
