Top 10 Dangerous Computer Virus

tallaramarcelino
Mar 6, 2015
5 min read

“VIRUS” is a word we have heard in biology, studied about it and have been infected by it at some point in our lives. Sadly the word, as its nature isn’t just isolated to the world of biology, but also to the computing world. VIRUS stands for Vital Information Resources Under Siege and are of various kinds. They are known to cause a lot of damage both physically and financially to many systems globally which are a part of business organizations and the IT sectors. Created by some of the smartest people out there just to prove their mettle or just for the sake of playing pranks, viruses have embedded themselves deep into the roots of computing. Well as of now there are millions of viruses out there and keep getting more and more threatening and dangerous every day. Though not all of them are dangerous, I have compiled a list of the top deadliest viruses that created a fiasco and wreaked havoc in numerous companies and organizations.

1. Melissa

Creator: David L. Smith

Founded: March 26th, 1999

Spread through: email attachment

Melissa, named after a dancer in Florida, is probably one of the most dangerous viruses to have affected the systems. Spreading through email attachments, the virus replicates itself once activated and dispatches the replicates to 50 of the contacts in the email address book of the user. It lead to a stop in the email system for a while until this virus was stopped. Though the virus didn’t cripple the internet network, it definitely caused a tremor that shook the technological era.

2. ILOVEYOU/ Love Letter

Creator: Onel De Guzman

Founded: 2000

Spread through: email attachment

Immediately a year after the Melissa debacle, came one more virus named I LOVE YOU virus. It was basically a worm as it had the stand-alone capability to replicate itself and inflict damage. It was similar to the Melissa virus and spread itself through email attachments. The email’s subject says that it is a love letter from a secret admirer and once opened infuses itself into the systems. The virus is known to attack the poor system’s hard drive first, then the registry keys and meanwhile keeps copying itself and entrenches deep into files and folders. By some survey, the virus had said to have caused around $ 10 Billion in damages.

3. MyDoom

Creator:Anonymous

Founded: 26th January 2004

Spread through: email

Probably one of the deadliest and threatening viruses ever created in the computing history. Unlike other viruses MyDoom attacks the search engines by sending multiple phony requests to them thereby making them slow and causing them to crash. It also could duplicate emails and send them over the network causing a lot of damage and loss to various companies.

4. CiH virus

Creator: Chen Ing-hau

Founded: 1998

Spread through:Internet circulation

CiH virus, better known as Chernobyl virus had an outbreak in the late 1990’s in Taiwan that wiped out the internal hard drives. This virus is also responsible for infecting the BIOS. This virus has many different variants likeCIH v1.2/CIH.1103, CIH.1049. The virus was responsible for around $ 6 Billion damages in total. The special thing about this virus was that it was actually an attempt by the creator to test the antiviral efficiency of packages out in the market.

5. Anna Kournikova Virus

Creator: Jan De Wit

Founded: February 11th 2001

Spread through:email message

“Anna Kournikova”? The name ring a bell? You people thinking about the tennis player? If you are, then you are absolutely right. This worm wasn’t made intentionally and the creator had no idea what his creation could do. This spread around like the other viruses like ILOVEYOU , CiH through emails which depicted to contain a picture of the player. Once the mail was opened, the worm automatically forwarded itself to all the contacts in the user’s address book. The virus though not that dangerous had to said to have caused around $ 166,000 in damages.

6. SQL slammer

Creator:Anonymous

Founded: January 2003

Spread through: Internet

It was a worm that basically slowed down the internet traffic and crashed multiple servers. You must be thinking that since it is named as “SQL Slammer”, the base of its creation was SQL. But it surprisingly isn’t. This worm infected the servers over UDP and fit themselves into a single packet, thereby slipping through all the ports inspite of the internet traffic and the routers not functioning. This worm created major problems during that year and resulted in a worst-case scenario in the tech field.

7. Sasser and Netsky

Creator:Sven Jaschan

Founded:April 30th,2000

Spread through: Network ports

Sasser and Netsky were both created by the 17-yr old German, who cleverly designed them to act in the most unique way as possible. As in both the worms were completely opposite in functioning as compared to each other. The Sasser worm exploited the vulnerability in the network ports and infected the host computers. The specialty of the Sasser virus was that it didn’t spread through email attachments. Instead, it would first scan the ip addresses of potential computers and then infect them. On the contrary, the Netsky worm would penetrate the systems via the conventional email messages and through Windows networks. Both these viruses resulted in a DoS attack (Denial of Service) and also slowed down the internet traffic considerably.

8. Code Red

Creator: Anonymous

Founded: July 13th 2001

Spread through:IIS servers

The Code Red virus bloomed into existence during the summer of 2001, and exploited the vulnerability in the indexing software (buffer flow) with IIS server in the internet. The virus managed to infect the web servers in the white house. This virus also lead to the discovery of another nemesis to the computing scenario named as Code Red II that had a same injection vector, but different payload.

9. Numbing Nimda

Creator: Anonymous

Founded: September 18th 2001

Spread through: email, network shares

This virus debuted itself in 2001 immediately a week after the attack on the World Trade Center. Some media began speculating a link between the virus and the attack on the WTC, which hasn’t been proved yet. The virus basically spreads through the email and browsing of compromised websites. The virus wasn’t very harmful but was said to have been the most dreaded virus if the final payload had worked.

10. Klez virus

Creator: Anonymous

Founded: October 2001

Spread through:email attachment

Now we look at the “The Klez virus”,known to affect the Windows Systems, eclipsing the anti-virus in the systems and posing itself as a virus removal tool. It again spread in the conventional way of attachments and forwarded itself to various contacts of the poor victim. Some variants of the virus created immense damage by rendering one’s computer as inoperable.