Virus attack is supposed to be one that causes a person to get sick and hence consult a doctor. But that was before the dawn of computers. Now virus attack is completely assigned to the comp. world. There are millions of computers attacked by viruses may not be daily but yearly. Here is a list of few deadly virus attacks from the past few decades...
* Elk Cloner(1982) - It is the first virus that hit personal computers worldwide. It spread through Apple II floppy disks. The programme was authored by Rich Skrenta, a 9th grader, who wanted to play a joke on his schoolmates.
* Brain(1986) - This is the first virus to hit Microsoft's DOS enabled computers. It was written by two Pakistani brothers and they left the phone number of their computer repair shop. It would fill unused space on the floppy disk. BusinessWeek magazine called it the Pakistani flu.
* Morris(1988) - It was written by a Cornell University grad student, Robert Tappan Morris. The virus infected an estimated 6000 university and military computers connected over internet. The irony here is that Morris's father was a top govt. computer-security expert.
* CIH(1998) - There was a lull period for a decade, then came one of the most harmful viruses, Chernobyl virus also known as CIH in 1998. It overwrites critical information on infected system drives. It is also known as "space filler virus", due to its ability to clandestinely take up file space on computers and disable anti-virus software.
* Melissa(1999) - It was one of the first viruses to spread over email. When users opened an attachment, the virus sent copies of itself to the first 50 people in the user's address book and covered the globe within hours. It caused more than $80m in damage after it was launched in March 1999.
* ILOVEYOU(2000) - Also called "Love Bug" spread via email attachments and tricked recipients into opening it by disguising itself as a love letter. Companies in Australia had to close down their email systems to keep the virus from spreading.
* Code Red(2001) - One of the most expensive viruses in history, exploited vulnerability in Microsoft IIS servers. It needed just a network connection to spread. The virus struck multiple times on the same system.
* Blaster(2003) - Also known as Lovan took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft software. Microsoft offered cash rewards to people who helped them capture the virus writers. The worm started circulating in August 2003.
* Sasser(2004) - It led to several computers crashing and rebooting themselves. It caused infected computers to restart continuously every time a user attempted to connect to the internet. The first version struck on April 30, 2004.
* Storm worm(2007) - The storm worm originally posed as breaking news of bad weather hitting Europe. Then it disguised itself in several forms. users who fell for it unknowingly became a part of a botnet.
* Conficker(2008) - Also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido uses a combination of advanced malware techniques and spread rapidly into one of the largest computer worm infection. There have been two variants since its first detection in November 2008.
Via TOI
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