The Most Destructive Viruses of All Time

A computer virus can surely be a nightmare. Some people consider it to be a mild inconvenience and might need a cleanup. However, in certain cases, it might prove to be a complete disaster and can turn your computer into something that no antivirus will be able to protect.

In this blog, you will get to learn about the worst viruses which can a lot of damage that you can realize. The malware that has been mentioned below has caused enough harm which cost billions of dollars to be removed and can disrupt life infrastructure.

I Love You

This is taken to be one of the strongest computer virus which had ever been created. It is not much difficult to see why. This has caused a lot of problems in the computer system all across the world. As a matter of fact, it led to damage that estimated to $10 billion. About ten percent of the computer connected through the internet had been infected. The effect had been so bad that large companies and government took the mailing system offline for preventing infection. Onel de Guzman and Reonel Ramones, the 2 Filipino it used social engineering and entices people to click on an attachment. For this, it was a love confession. It was actually a TXT file since Windows hid the real extension file. Once it is clicked, it is going to send itself to every user present in the mailing list of the user. Thereafter, it is going to overwrite the field. Thus, the computer becomes unbootable.

Melissa

The malware derives its name from one of the most exotic dancer hailing from Florida. It is developed by David L. Smith in the year 1999. The virus started by infecting the Word document which had been posted in alt.sex usenet group. It actually claimed to be a series of passwords for all porn sites. Thus, people became curious and when they downloaded it and opened the file, it triggered the macro inside. Then it would unleash the payload. This virus was mailed to the top fifty people in the email address book of the user. This is lead to an increase in email traffic. Hence, it had a negative effect on the email service of big corporations and governments. At times, it corrupted, as it inserted Simpsons reference into it.

Code Red

This virus first surfaced in the year 2001. It had been discovered by the employees of eye Digital Security and it had been given the name Code red since the pair who developed it had been drinking Mountain Dew’s Code Red. They aimed at computers with the web server of Microsoft IIS. It exploited the problem of buffer overflow inside the system. The malware hardly any trace on the hard disk since it can run completely on the memory, having a size of 3,569 bytes. When the system is infected, it will progress on to develop 100 copies all by itself because of a bug in programming, it will make more duplicate. Thus, it will eat up more resourced than you know. Thereafter, it is going to launch a service attack on many IP addresses. One of the most famous was the White House. Also, it gives back-door access to the server. It leaves behind a message, hacked by Chinese. You can check the scanguard antivirus review and latest update to find out if it can treat Code Red. The malware caused damage of $2 billion.

Sasser

Discovered in 2004, it is a Windows worm and had been developed by Sven Jaschan, a computer science student. He is also known to have developed Netsky worm. The payload itself might be quite annoying. It slowed down the computer and it crashed. Hence, it was difficult to reset it without rebooting it. The effects were quite disruptive as millions of computers had been and crucial infrastructure had been affected. The malware drew advantage from the buffering overflow susceptible in the LSASS or Local Security Authority Subsystem Service. It controls the security policy of local account which led to the computer crashing. Moreover, it used the resources of the system for propagating itself into the other machines through the internet. Thus, others were infected automatically. It led to millions of infection causing problems for crucial infrastructure such as new agencies, airlines, hospitals, public transport, and much more.

Conficker

It is also known as Downadup or Down up. It is a worm which has unknown Windows authorship had been created in 2008. Their names has been derived from an English word, configure and is a German pejorative. The malware can infect a system with the help of flaws present in the operating system for creating a botnet. It infected over 9 millions system all across the world. The virus affected individuals and businesses. As a matter of fact, till now, it is one of the largest worm infections to be ever experienced. It works by damaging the network service vulnerability. Once it infects your system, it will lockout account policies, block the access to an update of Windows, and also turn off some services. Thereafter, the malware will progress onto install the software which will convert the system to botnet slave.

Zeus

It is a Trojan horse that had been developed for infecting a computer. This way it could perform different criminal tasks. One of the most common tasks is form grabbing and keylogging of man in the browser. Most of the computers had been infected through phishing scams or even drive-by downloads. It had been identified for the first time in the year 2009. The malware had compromised innumerable FTP accounts and also computers from big multinational banks and corporations.

These viruses spread really quickly and had affected a large number of people. It led to a lot of damage. Hence, it is better to be careful and keep it from spreading and then affecting your system. Keep in mind that it can spread through messages, e-mail, or even corrupted links on the internet. Computers are great but they only do what they are asked to do. Hence, if viruses do the bad things then it can cause enough damage.