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Anonymous
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2009-03-25 20:53:55 |
1982. Elk Cloner:
Elk Cloner has the rather dubious honour of being known as the first virus to operate "in the wild". Before 15-year-old Richard Skrenta’s virus infected Apple II computers, viruses had only existed in closed networks, but the Elk Cloner showed what potential for damage viruses had.
Skrenta has since described the virus – which he developed to infect school friends' computers – as "some dumb little practical joke".
1986. Brain
Often known as the Pakistani Flu, the Brain virus was developed by Basit Farooq Alvi and his brother Amjad – who claim that it was designed to stop people ripping off their medical software.
The virus gave people the numbers of the Farooq Alvi brothers, who were then bemused to be bombarded with angry calls from the UK and US as their creation went global.
1987. Jerusalem Virus
The sinister Jerusalem virus was a DOS virus which infected major files on the computer, making them bigger and more cumbersome.
However, this virus would also delete every program that it had infected on Friday 13th of every year apart from 1987. A nasty little critter.
1991. Michelangelo
A work that will be remembered more for its hype than the actual damage it caused, the Michelangelo virus hit headlines when it was predicted it would bring down whole companies on March 6 – the birthday of Michelangelo.
Although the virus – programmed to hit MS-DOS computers – had infected some commercially published software, the media lost interest in the story when less than 20,000 cases of infection were reported.
1999. Melissa Worm
The Melissa Worm remains one of the most infamous viruses of all time. It was programmed to infect Microsoft Word and Outlook and send masses of e-mail. The sheer volume of traffic that it created as it swept the planet was enough to slow down entire networks.
The way the virus worked meant that whole private documents could be sent out to other people without the sender’s knowledge, and it spawned several different successors.
The worm’s creator, David Smith, was fined and jailed for 20 months in a federal prison after being caught.
2000. ILOVEYOU/The Love Bug
Another virus that will live in infamy is the ILOVEYOU virus, also known as Love Bug or the VBS/Loveletter.
This nasty little virus originally had an attachment called ‘LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.VBS’; hardly sophisticated in these more cynical times but enticing enough then to lure thousands to open the attachment and download the worm.
ILOVEYOU started in the Philippines but spread like wildfire. It is estimated that it infected 10% of all computers connected to the internet causing a massive $5.5 billion worth of damage as it overwhelmed and crippled mail servers.
2003. SoBig
The insidious SoBig virus may not have picked up the publicity of the ILOVEYOU bug but it had a huge impact, infecting millions of Windows computers. In fact it was the sixth variant of the virus, SoBig.F, that became the big hitter, using the old technique of an e-mail attachment to lure in unsuspecting people.
Although there is much speculation over who created the virus – nobody has ever been convicted, but SoBig was the fastest spreading virus until MyDoom took its throne a year later.
2003. SQL Slammer.
In just 10 minutes the Slammer had infected 75,000 computers and noticeably slowed the entire internet as it exploited a server problem that had already been patched, catching out those who had not updated their software.
The program sent itself to randomly generated IP addresses, hitting hundreds of machines in seconds, although it only affected those that were running un-patched copies Microsoft SQL Server.
2004. MyDoom
One of the most famous viruses of all time and the fastest spreading of its era, MyDoom was an e-mail worm that opened a back door into computers running Microsoft Windows allowing that computer to be controlled by hackers.
MyDoom also looked to be targeting specific companies (SCO Group and Microsoft) by overwhelming its servers with traffic in what is knows as a Distributed Denial of Service attack. However, many now believe this would not have worked on more than about a quarter of infected machines.
Incredibly, MyDoom reportedly slowed average web page loading times by 50% as well as slowing internet traffic by 10%. Search engines Google, AltaVista and Lycos were taken down for most of a working day on July 26.
2007. Storm Worm
In January 2007, thousands of computers were infected by the Storm Worm – created to produce a massive bot net, a network of computers that could be controlled by hackers.
Using news headlines to lure people into clicking, the malware – or malicious programs – contained within made huge changes to the infected computer, including running other worms and viruses and opening a backdoor that allowed other people to control the machine.
uk.msn.com
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