The Most Dangerous Computer Viruses in History

Computer Viruses

Technology is rapidly growing these days, not only in positive ways but also in negative ways. In fact all the cyber crimes are committed by computer literate people. Designing malware can be for monetary benefit or only for pleasure. In past few decades, viruses and worms have terribly affected numberless users. Today, we will talk about the most disastrous malware introduced in past decades.

Jerusalem (1986):

This was one amongst the first destructive malware and was released in 1987. This MS DOS virus infected a number of computers all around America, Europe and Middle East. Mainly, the virus infected computer systems present at universities and companies worldwide. In those days, people were not aware of the existence of malware, neither were the anti-virus software as developed as they are today. Therefore, the Jerusalem stayed unobserved for a long time. The virus was first noticed in Jerusalem therefore was named after the city.

Morris (1988):

Though made with good intentions, Morris alias Internet Worm infected a lot of computers in 1988. According to the designer, he only made it while trying to measure internet size. It had an error that caused harm to computer systems all around the USA, including the NASA research institute. Around $96 million loss was caused by this malware. Personal damages included picking up the passwords.

Solar Sunrise (1998):

Two Californian teenagers took American government by surprise, in 1998, when they intruded and took control of around 500 systems that belonged to the governmental as well as private sector. This was done with the help of a computer virus and the situation was given the name of Solar Sunrise, after an operating system called Sun Solaris. The computers that ran this OS had few weaknesses. US government took the incident as another golden opportunity to blame Iraqis but soon found out that the culprits were no other than their own Americans.

The virus was able to cause damage to a computer various times, slowing the speed to an extent where it became useless. It resulted in first ever conviction in the US under 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Mr. Morris is working as an Associate Professor at MIT these days.

Melissa (1999):

We cannot call Melissa a virus or a worm; this was a Macro Virus. According to definition, it is “a virus which is written in macro language which is a language built into a software application such as a word processor.” This macro virus was not intended to cause harm, but it certainly caused huge devastation on March 26, 1999 when the Internet Mail System was blocked by numberless infected mails.

David L. Smith was the author of this malware and he named it after a dancer he knew. Melissa had the ability to mass mail itself from MS Outlook 97 and 98. Also, it could spread on MS Word 97 and 2000, and Microsoft Excel 97, 2000 and 2003.

I Love You (2000):

This is one of the most dangerous worms ever and spread worldwide in only one night. It infected around ten percent of all internet users, and the monetary loss was around $5.5 billion. The process started when a user received an email with the subject “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs”. As soon as the file was opened, the virus managed to send its copy to every address present in the Windows Address Book. This worm was written by a Filipino student who was punished as Philippines had no law related to such cyber crimes. Perhaps this incident triggered the creation of European Union’s global Cybercrime Treaty.

The Code Red Worm (2001):

This worm effected innumerable computer systems and the damage it caused was around $2 billion. Effected computers ran MS’s IIS web server. It affected computers and websites in many ways like defacing the websites (HELLO! Welcome to http://www.worm.com! Hacked by Chinese!), spreading itself by looking for more IIS servers on the Internet etc. planning included waiting for more than 20 days after its installation to launch “denial of service” attacks on several fixed IP addresses, including the IP address of White House web serve. Anyways, White House managed to escape the attack.

Nimda (2001):

This is the most widespread worm of the internet. It spread within a short span of 22 minutes. The name was given by reversing the spelling of ADMIN. Both servers and clients were affected by this worm.

It is considered to be one of the most complicated worms as it had 5 different methods of infecting:

1. Through emails
2. Through surfing compromised websites
3. Through open network shares
4. Through exploiting a variety of Microsoft IIS 4.0 / 5.0 index traversal vulnerabilities
5. And through back doors left behind by the “Code Red II” and “sadmind/IIS” worms.

Slammet (2003):

This worm caused denial of service on few internet hosts. It resulted in a drastic slowing down of internet traffic, and spread in a span as small as ten minutes. The effects caused by slammer were very much like the Code Red Worm.

The strength of this virus can be imagined by the fact that many countries took it as a planned and pre organized assault upon them.

Blaster (2003):

August 2003 brought the Blaster a.k.a. Lovsan and Lovesan with it to the computers that ran Windows XP and 2000. it kept on spreading from 11th August to 13th August, when it was largely publicized so that people could begin using the internet safely.

www.windowsupdate.comwas mainly targeted but Microsoft escaped much loss by terminating the marked site for some time. The worm contained two hidden messages:

1. I just want to say LOVE YOU SAN!!
2. Billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!

Conficker (2008):

Conficker a.k.a. Kido, Downup and Downadup is one of the recent threats to online world. As most of the other worms, this malware is also targeted at MS Windows OS. According to New York Times, conficker has more than 7 million computer systems under its control now. China, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, and India were the main affected nations.

We enjoy the internet facilities according to our needs, but the malware is a huge obstruction in our way to fully benefit from the internet. It is needed that manufacturers construct the operating systems in such a way that there is no loophole left in them.

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Tags: computer viruses, dangerous computer viruses, viruses