Viruses can be deadly to human health and this applies to computers as well. Often we hear about viruses affecting computers. However they have been hitting the computers for since years.
Let’s look back at the 20 most influential viruses that badly punished the computers.
Creeper (1971):
The first worm program ran on a DEC 10 computer under the TOPS TEN operating system.
Elk Cloner (1985):
It was the first virus for personal computers, specifically for Apple II systems. Created by a student, the virus infected the operating system, was copied on the floppy disks and displayed one or two verses of a poem. The virus did not have much notoriety or caused great concern, however, few realized that it would initiate a generation of cyber criminals and, in parallel, an industry of information security.
Morris Worm (1985):
Written by computer scientist and entrepreneur – Morris Tappan Morris, which paralyzed the Internet. This virus is, by many, considered to be the first computer worm on the internet. Interestingly the scientist was prosecuted for releasing the worm on the internet.
Pakistani Brain (1988):
The first virus that infected the IBM PC and was written by two brothers from Pakistan. This was the first virus that received extensive media coverage, although viruses were already known before.
Jerusalem Family (1990):
Almost fifty variables of this virus were counted, which is believed to have come out of the University of Jerusalem.
Stoned (1989):
It is the virus that most spread in the first decade when viruses started hitting the computers. Stoned infected the boot / .mbr sector that counted the number of restarts since the original infection and showed the phrase “your computer is now stoned.”
Dark Avenger Mutation Engine (1990):
Was written in 1988, but was used in the early nineties in viruses such as POGUE and COFFEESHOP. This mutation engine was the first real Polymorph that was used at a massive level and changed the way viruses work forever.
Micheangelo (1992):
A variant of STONED, with a destructive load. On March 6, this virus erased the first 100 sectors of a hard drive, rendering it useless. It provoked one of the first media panics around the computer equipment viruses.
World Concept (1995):
The first macro virus for Microsoft Word. Word Concept wrote the phrase, “That’s enough to prove my point.” It started the second era of viruses and was important in the sense that it took the viruses to a much less advanced level of hackers.
CIH / Chernobyl (1998):
The Chernobyl virus was the most destructive virus ever seen, until then. Attacking the 26th of each month (depending on the version involved), erased the hard drive, and removed the BIOS ROM flash from the computer in question.
Melissa (1999):
Was the first virus that spread via email and marked the beginning of the era of Internet viruses. The devastating Melissa virus combined viruses and worms to spread and infect millions of users. While Melissa was not destructive, it did replicate and saturated the mailboxes wherever it arrived.
Lovebug (2001):
Is the most popular email worm, motivated solely by social engineering. It is an excellent example of this technique, which invited the victims to open the attached file with the promise of a love letter. The virus spread rapidly across the world, causing email failures and losses to companies in several billion dollars.
Code RED (2001):
Baptized with the name of a popular soda, this network virus spread without the need of an email or a web page. It located vulnerable computers and infected them by itself. It affected almost 400,000 web pages.
NIMDA (2001):
Called the “Swiss Army Knife” of viruses, it used buffer saturation, email, network partitions, and ten other methods to enter a network.
Bagel/ Netsky (2004):
Were viruses designed to demonstrate a false competition, or a war with each other. With hundreds of versions each and several amounts of new technology and success, these two worms took the news virtually all year.
Botnets (2004):
These zombie warriors of the Internet offer electronic criminals an infinite collection of infected computers that can be reconfigured in networks to send spam, infect new people, steal data, etc.
Zotob (2005):
This worm only affected Windows 2000 systems that were not updated, but managed to leave important media operatives, including CNN and the New York Times.
Rootkits (2005):
They have become one of the most popular tools in the world of malicious code. It is used to make other malicious codes invisible by altering the operating system.
Storm Worm (2007):
The virus went through thousands of versions, possibly creating the biggest botnet in the world. At one time it was believed that more than 15 million computers were infected at the same time, and that they were under the control of the criminals.
Italian Job (2007):
Instead of a single piece of malicious code, Italian Job was a coordinated attack using a pre-packaged toolkit known as MPACK. It corrupted more than 10,000 websites, making them deploy modern Data Stealing Malware.