TOP 10 COMPUTER VIRUSES

In this topic, we will discuss different types of Viruses.

1. ELK CLONER
Richard Skrenta was in 9th grade in 1982 when he wrote this virus. It infected computers
to display a poem every 50th time they booted up. It is a boot sector virus which infected
any floppy disk that was placed in the computer.

2. THE MORRIS WORM

Robbert Tappan Morris wrote this virus in 1988, when he was still a graduate student.
Considered the first worm, it lead Morris becoming the first person convicted under
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

3. MY DOOM
My Doom explored its way to the malware on 26th January 2004. It scattered
exponentially via e-mail with random senders addresses and subjects line. Its also
known as Novarg. It infected two million computers swiftly. The damage caused by
this virus was whooping $38 billion.

4. I LOVE YOU VIRUS

Back in 2000 one of the trickiest computer malware ever was detected on May 4 in
Philippines. About 10% of the internet users were infected in 2000, i.e. almost 50 million
users in 9 days which caused CIA and Pentagon to shut their computers down. This bug
was transmitted via e-mail, having a subject line as ILOVEYOU. As soon as the file
was opened, it took the liberty of emailing itself to first 50 contacts present in Windows
Address Book.

5. MELISSA VIRUS
Hacker David Smith wrote the virus for a stripper named Melissa. It was a first massmailing macro virus which became the breaking news across the world on March 26,
1999. It was distributed as an email attachment and when it was clicked upon, the virus
seeks for Microsoft Outlook Address Book to email itself to first 50 contacts with the
message Here is that document you asked for. Dont show to anyone else.

6. NIMDA VIRUS
This worm was released on September 18, 2001, a week after 9/11 attack. The name was
derived from a word Admin spelled backwards. It took 22 minutes to spread via four
different ways i.e. email, servers vulnerabilities, share folders and file transfer. Its

purpose was to slow down the internet traffic considerably, causing a denial-attack in
service attack.

7. SQL SLAMMER
It first hit the Internet at 5:30 A.M GMT on January 25, 2003. Ten minutes later 75,000
computers got infected with this worm. Its also known as Sapphire. It dramatically
slowed down global internet traffic and brought down South Koreas online capacity on
knees for 12 hours. Its abrupt release infected Network packets. It caused $950 million
and $1.2 billion in lost productivity.

8. CREEPER
It was the first computer virus. It was developed in 1971. It infected PDP-11 computers
connected to ARPANET. Once infected the computer displayed the message, I am the
creeper, catch me if you can. Self- replicating but not too dangerous. Creeper opened the
door and the list walked through it.

9. CONFICKER
In 2009, a new computer worm Conficker crawled its way around the world. It is very
difficult to detect without running an upgraded version of latest antivirus. It might spread
via removable drives like hard disks etc. by adding a corrupt file so that when a device is
attached to another computer, it spreads virus. It has assembles an army of zombies
which has the potential to steal financial data and other important information from your
system.

10.. CODE RED

On July 13, 2001 Code Red was unleashed on Network servers. It infected 360,000
computers in a single day. It proved very hard to stop because the worm would
continually re-infect the same computer it had been cleaned from. It simply needed an
active internet connection with which it defaces the webpage you open and display a text
string Hacked by Chinese!
RELATED LINKS
http://listdose.com/top-10-most-dangerous-computer-viruses-ever/
http://www.sciencechannel.com/science-technology/10-computer-viruses.htm
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/gallery/2009-04/top-10-computer-viruses/?image=0