In this list, we will highlight some of the worst and notorious computer viruses that have caused a lot of damage in real life.
And since people usually equate general malware like worms and trojan
horses as viruses, we’re including them as well.
These malware have
caused tremendous harm, amounting to billions of dollars and disrupting
critical real life infrastructure. Here are the 10 most famous and malicious computer viruses.
1. ILOVEYOU
The ILOVEYOU virus is considered one of the most virulent computer virus ever created
and it’s not hard to see why. The virus managed to wreck havoc on
computer systems all over the world, causing damages totaling in at an estimate
of $10 billion. 10% of the world’s Internet-connected computers were
believed to have been infected. It was so bad that governments and large
corporations took their mailing system offline to prevent infection.
2. Code Red
Code Red first surfaced on 2001 and was discovered by two eEye Digital Security employees. It was named Code Red because the the pair were drinking Code Red Mountain Dew at the time of discovery. The worm targeted computers with Microsoft IIS web server installed,
exploiting a buffer overflow problem in the system. It leaves very
little trace on the hard disk as it is able to run entirely on memory,
with a size of 3,569 bytes. Once infected, it will proceed to make a
hundred copies of itself but due to a bug in the programming, it will
duplicate even more and ends up eating a lot of the systems resources.
It will then launch a denial of service attack on several IP address, famous among them the website of the White House. It also allows backdoor access to the server, allowing for remote access to the machine. The most memorable symptom is the message it leaves behind on affected web pages, "Hacked By Chinese!", which has become a meme itself. A patch was later released and it was estimate that it caused $2 billion in lost productivity. A total of 1-2 million servers were affected, which is amazing when you consider there were 6 million IIS servers at the time.
3. Melissa
Named after an exotic dancer from Florida, it was created by David L. Smith in 1999. It started as an infected Word document
that was posted up on the alt.sex usenet group, claiming to be a list
of passwords for pornographic sites. This got people curious and when it
was downloaded and opened, it would trigger the macro inside and
unleash its payload. The virus will mail itself to the top 50 people in the user’s email address book and this caused an increase of email traffic, disrupting the email services of governments and corporations. It also sometimes corrupted documents by inserting a Simpsons reference into them.
Smith was eventually caught
when they traced the Word document to him. The file was uploaded using a
stolen AOL account and with their help, law enforcement was able to
arrest him less than a week since the outbreak began. He cooperated with the FBI in capturing other virus creators,
famous among them the creator of the Anna Kournikova virus. For his
cooperation, he served only 20 months and paid a fine of $5000 of his 10
year sentence. The virus reportedly caused $80 million in damages.
4. Sasser
A Windows worm first discovered in 2004, it was created
by computer science student Sven Jaschan, who also created the Netsky
worm. While the payload itself may be seen as simply annoying (it slows
down and crashes the computer, while making it hard to reset without
cutting the power), the effects were incredibly disruptive, with
millions of computers being infected, and important, critical
infrastructure affected. The worm took advantage of a buffer
overflow vulnerability in Local Security Authority Subsystem Service
(LSASS), which controls the security policy of local accounts causing
crashes to the computer. It will also use the system resources to
propagate itself to other machines through the Internet and infect
others automatically.
The effects of the virus were widespread as while the exploit was already patched, many computers haven’t updated. This led to more than a million infections, taking out critical infrastructures, such as airlines, news agencies, public transportation, hospitals, public transport, etc. Overall, the damage was estimated to have cost $18 billion. Jaschen was tried as a minor and received a 21 month suspended sentence.
5. Zeus
Zeus is a Trojan horse made to infect Windows computers so that it will
perform various criminal tasks. The most common of these tasks are
usually man-in-the-browser keylogging and form grabbing.
The majority of computers were infected either through drive-by
downloads or phishing scams. First identified in 2009, it managed to compromise thousands of FTP accounts and computers from large multinational corporations and banks
such as Amazon, Oracle, Bank of America, Cisco, etc. Controllers of the
Zeus botnet used it to steal the login credentials of social network,
email and banking accounts.
In the US alone, it was estimated that more than 1 million computers were infected,
with 25% in the US. The entire operation was sophisticated, involving
people from around the world to act as money mules to smuggle and
transfer cash to the ringleaders in Eastern Europe. About $70 million
were stolen and in possession of the ring. 100 people were arrested in connection of the operation. In late 2010, the creator of Zeus announced his retirement but many experts believe this to be false.
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