Top 10 Viruses

Computer viruses can be a nightmare. Some can wipe out the information on a hard drive, tie up traffic on a computer network for hours, turn an innocent machine into a zombie and replicate and send themselves to other computers. Below we are going to share with you Top 10 Viruses and their information.

Storm Virus
Storm gets its name from the trap that is its method of infection.Storm Worm struck the cyber world as a malicious Trojan horse program in late 2006 when users began receiving e-mails with a subject line “230 dead as storm batters Europe.” It was without a doubt one of the most sophisticated and greatest cyber fraud networks ever constructed. It tricked the victims into clicking the fake links in an e-mail that was infected by the virus which could easily turn any Windows PC into a botnet, letting someone offsite operate it remotely for sending spam mails across the internet. In January 2007, it was estimated that out of all global malware infections, 8% is due to the Storm worm as the number of this dangerous malware infected PCs was close to 10 million.To this day, it remains a major security risk and continues to spread in new ways, including via links inserted into blog postings and bulletin boards.

Sasser and Netsky
The Sasser worm was a destructive beast when it hit in 2004, counting big targets such as the British Coast Guard (which lost its mapping capabilities), Agence France-Presse (which lost its satellite communications) and Delta Airlines (which had to cancel flights when their computer system went down).A 17-year-old German named Sven Jaschan created the two programs and unleashed them onto the Internet. The Sasser worm attacked computers through a Microsoft Windows vulnerability. Unlike other worms, it didn't spread through e-mail. Instead, once the virus infected a computer, it looked for other vulnerable systems.
The Netsky virus moves through e-mails and Windows networks. It spoofs e-mail addresses and propagates through a 22,016-byte file attachment. As it spreads, it can cause a denial of service (DoS) attack as systems collapse while trying to handle all the Internet traffic.
Sven Jaschan, creator of the Sasser and Netsky viruses

Nimda Virus
Nimda (that's "admin" spelled backward) hit the virus scene in 2001 and quickly (very quickly) rose to the top.Nimda spread through the Internet rapidly, becoming the fastest propagating computer virus at that time. In fact, according to TruSecure CTO Peter Tippett, it only took 22 minutes from the moment Nimda hit the Internet to reach the top of the list of reported attacks.The Nimda worm's primary targets were Internet servers. While it could infect a home PC, its real purpose was to bring Internet traffic to a crawl. It could travel through the Internet using multiple methods, including e-mail.The Nimda worm created a backdoor into the victim's operating system. It allowed the person behind the attack to access the same level of functions as whatever account was logged into the machine currently.

Melissa Virus
Melissa was the first mass-mailing macro virus for the new age of e-mailing which became the breaking news across the world on March 26, 1999. a man named David L. Smith created a computer virus based on a Microsoft Word macro. He built the virus so that it could spread through e-mail messages. Smith named the virus "Melissa," saying that he named it after an exotic dancer from Florida.the Melissa computer virus tempts recipients into opening a document with an e-mail message like "Here is that document you asked for, don't show it to anybody else." Once activated, the virus replicates itself and sends itself out to the top 50 people in the recipient's e-mail address book.Smith lost his case and received a 20-month jail sentence. The court also fined Smith $5,000 and forbade him from accessing computer networks without court authorization.

Code Red I and II Computer Viruses

In the summer 2001, a computer worm most commonly referred to as “Code Red” was unleashed on the network servers on July 13. It was a very sneaky virus which took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft Internet Information Server. This virus was for the first time detected by two of the eEye Digital Security employees and at the time when they found out about the virus, they were drinking Code Red Mountain Dew; hence the name “Code Red.” The Virus turned your computer into a slave, letting someone offsite operate it remotely. 

ILOVEYOU Virus

In 2000, one of the trickiest computer malware ever was detected on May 4 in Philippines. Around 10% of the internet users committed a huge mistake by going on the name of this hazardous worm.The ILOVEYOU virus initially traveled the Internet by e-mail, just like the Melissa virus. The subject of the e-mail said that the message was a love letter from a secret admirer. An attachment in the e-mail was what caused all the trouble. The original worm had the file name of LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs. The vbs extension pointed to the language the hacker used to create the worm: Visual Basic Scripting. 

It copied itself several times and hid the copies in several folders on the victim's hard drive.

It added new files to the victim's registry keys.

It replaced several different kinds of files with copies of itself.

It sent itself through Internet Relay Chat clients as well as e-mail.

It downloaded a file called WIN-BUGSFIX.EXE from the Internet and executed it. Rather than fix bugs, this program was a password-stealing application that e-mailed secret information to the hacker's e-mail address.

SQL Slammer/Sapphire

SQL Slammer, a standalone malicious program also known as “Sapphire” appeared at the starting of the year 2003 and was the first fileless worm which rapidly infected more than 75000 vulnerable hosts within10 minutes on 25th January.The Slammer virus was doubling its number of victims every few seconds.The Bank of America's ATM service crashed, the city of Seattle suffered outages in 911 service and Continental Airlines had to cancel several flights due to electronic ticketing and check-in errors.

MyDoom

My Doom explored its way to the malware world on 26th January 2004 and sent a shockwave around the world as it scattered exponentially via e-mail with random senders’ addresses and subject lines. My Doom also known as “Novarg” is reported to be the most dangerous virus ever released, breaking the previous record set by the Sobig F worm. It transmitted itself in a particularly deceitful manner through e-mail as what receiver would first reckon to be a bounced error message as it reads “Mail Transaction Failed.” But, as soon as the message is clicked upon, the attachment is executed and the worm is transferred to e-mail addresses found in user’s address book. Like the Klez virus, MyDoom could spoof e-mails so that it became very difficult to track the source of the infection.

Conficker

In 2009, a new computer worm Conficker also known as Downup, Domnadup and Kido crawled its way into as many as fifteen million Microsoft Windows operating systems around the world without human intervention using a patched Windows flaw. Conficker virus is very difficult to detect without running an upgraded version of original anti-virus and malware scanner. Conficker has assembled an army of zombies which has the potential to steal financial data and other important information from your system.

CIH

A destructive parasitic virus CIH also known as “Chernobyl” was first emerged in the year 1998 in Taiwan and quickly became one of the most dangerous and destructive viruses to ever hit with a payload that corrupts data. The CIH virus infects Windows 95 and 98 executable file and after doing that it remains a resident in the machine’s memory, where it infects other executables. Once activated, the virus annihilates the data on the hard disk and overwrites the computer’s Flash BIOS chip, rendering it completely inoperable and unless the chip is reprogrammed the user will not be able to boot the machine at all.

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