Most dangerous computer virus(s) of all the time, which created panic in companies

By
vamshi A
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1

“computer virus” is a very familiar word for all the digital people, specially to the mobile and laptop users. We use antivirus to protect our computer but then the level of security depends on, Which antivirus software you are using ?

We are listing the worst viruses of all the time. These computer viruses corrupted company’s core databases and merely scaled down the company to foot level.

 

Here are the most dangerous viruses in the history of Digital World.

Elk Cloner

In 1981, the  “Elk Cloner” virus created Richard Skrenta infected the Apple DOS 3.3, then spread to other computers by floppy disk transfer. The “Elk Virus” was  the first computer virus to cause a massive outbreak ever in history.

 

Jerusalem-1987

This is one of the “MS-DOS “viruses affected many universities ,companies all over the world.On Friday 13, 1988 this virus infected many computers in America and middle east.the virus was named after one of the places got acquainted -Jerusalem.

Morris(a.k.a internet worm)-1988

Morris virus infected a cluster of systems in the United States of America including the NASA Research Institute. It replicated itself and sent the copies all the systems connected in the network.  Morris was strong enough and infected many client machines and other organizations. Morris caused a loss about $ 96 million.

Solar Sunrise-1998

In 1998, Hackers took control over 500 computer systems of  Army, government, and private sectors. The situation was named as Solar Sunrise after the attack occurred on the systems running on the Operating System Solar Sunrise. This attack was made by two American teenagers of California.

Melissa-1999

Melissa, It virus was developed by David L. Smith in Aberdeen Township. Melissa virus was hidden within a file called “List.DiC”. The original form of the virus was sent through e-mail to different users. computer systems got acknowledged when Melissa virus attacked Internet mail system.After being caught, the creator of the virus was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a fine of $5,00.

I Love You-May 2000

Using a similar method as the Melissa, the computer virus dubbed “I Love You” managed to infect millions of computers around the world overnight. Just like Melissa this computer virus sent usernames and passwords, which were stored on the attacked computers, back to the developer of the virus.

After authorities traced the virus they found that a young Filipino student was behind the attack. The young man was released due to the fact that the Philippines did does not have any law that would prevent hacking and be spreading malware. This situation served as one of the premises for creating the European Union’s global Cybercrime Treaty.

 

 

The Code Red worm – July 2001

This 21st-century computer virus managed to penetrate tens of thousands of systems that ran Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 server software. The damages caused by the Code Red computer virus were estimated at $2 billion.

Code Red was developed to use the power of all computers it infected against the official website of the White House at a predetermined date. In collaboration with different virus hunters and tech firms, the White House managed to decipher the code of the Code Red virus and stop traffic as the malware started its attacks.

 

Downadup – 2009

The latest and most dangerous virus is the “Downadup” worm, also called “Conficker”. The computer security company F-Secure stated that the computer virus had infected 3.5 million computers worldwide. This malicious program was able to spread using a patched Windows flaw. Downadup was so “successful” in spreading across the Web because it used a flaw that Microsoft patched in October in order to distantly compromise computers that ran unpatched versions of Microsoft’s operating system.

 

The greatest power of the worm is believed to be the ability of computers, infected with the worm, to download destructive code from a random drop point. F-Secure was one of the company stated that, Three of the most affected countries were China, Brazil, and Russia.

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