By the time he got arrested in , he was already of age. There was a , bounty on his head , as the creator of Sasser. However, one of his friends blew the whistle on him. Instead, he also created the Netsky. The legal system gave Mr. Jaschan a suspended sentence when it became clear that he was a minor as he was writing the code.
Sasser crashed millions of computers globally, and with an apparently low infection rate, it incurred damages of around million USD. Melissa is a name in Greek mythology, and it refers to the first honey bee.
But in , there was also a Florida exotic dancer called Melissa who caught the attention of David L. Smith, the author of the eponymous computer virus. This one started as an infected Word document that the author posted to the Usenet. He persuaded thousands of Usenet lurkers to download it, claiming it was a list of working passwords for adult websites. Eventually, the unavoidable incident happened as people downloaded the file and opened it. Upon opening, a macro in the file would come alive and release its payload.
Thus Melissa reproduced itself. In addition, Melissa would show itself by inserting a Simpsons reference into the corrupted Word files now and then. Smith uploaded the fateful Word file through a stolen AOL account. Unfortunately for him, this allowed the authorities to trace the file back to him, so they arrested him before a week had passed.
Once caught, he worked along with the FBI to capture other virus writers —the Anna Kournikova virus author being the most well-known case. His cooperation earned him a reduced sentence 20 months and a USD fine — he was supposed to serve ten years.
Conficker, or Downup or Downadup, is a worm of unknown origin for Windows that first showed its ugly face in This malware proved how dangerous the overabundant security gaps in Windows could become as it exploited them to create a botnet. Nine million systems became hosts to Cornficker in every imaginable country , including places like private businesses, governments, individuals. Very few worms managed to infect so many computers and do so much damage — nine billion USD.
The virus used a vulnerability in a Windows network service that Microsoft took too long to patch. The active infection reset account lockout practices, blocked the Windows update and antivirus websites, turned off the services that could identify it, and locked out specific user accounts. Once all those changes are affected, the worm downloads and installs another piece of software that turns the computer into a slave in a botnet.
Here are a few more worthy mentions extending the legacy of the worst computer viruses:. The difference between a virus and a worm is very straightforward to understand.
A virus is a parasitic code that needs another program to activate it or make it work. On the other hand, a worm can run without any help. Viruses and worms get into systems in many ways.
For instance, the most frequent method of getting infections right now is to click on attachments, open files, or follow link s in unwanted emails. How is that possible? Because many a virus will impersonate somebody else to persuade you to open that link or launch that file.
But, since not every virus works the same way, you cannot generalize how your computer should act upon getting a virus. Nonetheless, you can certainly avoid a few careless habits that often lead to virus infections on your computer, phone, or any other device. Do you have an email from AppleSupport gmail. Likewise, be paranoid about attachments. Your late distant granny would have preferred contacting you directly instead of asking somebody else to hand over her remaining property to you.
Not every email you receive is legit. Today, digital advertising is the bane of computer security. This is because a lot of malware spreads through ads on malicious websites.
You can prevent this risk by avoiding fishy sites. But, of course, not all the ads in the world are dangerous. Or you could adopt a more active measure. For example, some VPN services can block ads. Likewise, you can use the more dedicated tools — the adblockers — for this purpose. While free WiFi hotspots are an attractive marketing strategy from hotels and other public places, they are seldom secure.
Often, these public WiFi harbor cybercriminals who keep looking for victims to infect their devices and steal data. Unless you have a robust antivirus and a VPN on your device, avoid connecting to such free WiFi to protect your online privacy and security.
Just open your antivirus and see what it tells you. For example, Windows 10 has a Windows Security feature, which includes an impressive protection tool against viruses, the Windows Defender.
You can even turn on its notifications to watch when and how it scans your system. The study of computer malware is not an established science at all. In fact, much of it relies on artistic intuition, ironically. So how did we choose our top twelve entries for the most malicious computer viruses? We considered estimates of lost work, infection length, the estimated number of infections.
Also, cleaning up a virus takes resources, and we considered that too. The truth is that nobody has any accurate data. Still, we considered several reports and shared with you something that was somehow common among the various sources.
The virus worked by tempting those who received the message to open a document that they have asked for. It even states that you are not to show it to anyone else. It would end up clogging entire emails systems because of how many emails were being sent out. Smith ended up being convicted after a long trial and received 20 months in prison.
This virus actually hit the Internet about a year after Melissa did. It came from the country of the Philippines. This threat actually came because of. It was a program that could stand on its own and was able to replicate itself.
The I Love You virus actually made it4s way through the Internet via email. It was inside a message that appeared to be a love letter from another person. There would be an attachment to the email. If you were to open that, you would be infected. This would create a host of problems, such as being copied several times and hiding on the hard drive.
It would replace certain files with copies of the virus. The problems just kept coming. With this virus, a new bar was reached.
It came out in and various forms of the virus would hit the Internet and wreak havoc for months. The worm would infect a computer via an email message. This would then replicate itself and be sent to almost everyone in the address book. This made it similar to Melissa, but there were twists. This worm could actually make the computer inoperable. It would even detect anti-virus software and disable it.
The evil nature of this one is that certain hackers actually intercepted the virus, made it even stronger, and sent it out again. Both of these worms ended up making their ugly appearance in Windows and Windows NT machines were particularly vulnerable. It created a buffer overflow problem, which meant that the computers would end up receiving much more information than it could handle at once.
This would cause it to start overwriting the memory. If your machine was affected, the computer would no longer obey your commands. Jaschen was tried as a minor and received a 21 month suspended sentence. 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 , 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. 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.
In late , the creator of Zeus announced his retirement but many experts believe this to be false. Also known as Downup or Downadup , Conficker is a worm of unknown authorship for Windows that made its first appearance in The name comes form the English word, configure and a German pejorative. It infects computers using flaws in the OS to create a botnet. The malware was able to infect more than 9 millions computers all around the world, affecting governments, businesses and individuals.
The worm works by exploiting a network service vulnerability that was present and unpatched in Windows. Once infected, the worm will then reset account lockout policies, block access to Windows update and antivirus sites, turn off certain services and lock out user accounts among many.
Then, it proceeds to install software that will turn the computer into a botnet slave and scareware to scam money off the user. Microsoft later provided a fix and patch with many antivirus vendors providing updates to their definitions. Believed to have been created by the Israeli Defence Force together with the American Government, Stuxnet is an example of a virus created for the purpose of cyberwarfare , as it was intended to disrupt the nuclear efforts of the Iranians. The computer worm was designed to attack industrial Programmable Logic Controllers PLC , which allows for automation of processes in machinery.
It specifically aimed at those created by Siemens and was spread through infected USB drives. It altered the speed of the machinery, causing it to tear apart. Siemens eventually found a way to remove the malware from their software. It was named by McAfee employee Craig Schmugar, one of the people who had originally discovered it. The worm spreads itself by appearing as an email transmission error and contains an attachment of itself.
The payload itself is twofold: first it opens up a backdoor to allow remote access and second it launches a denial of service attack on the controversial SCO Group. It was believed that the worm was created to disrupt SCO due to conflict over ownership of some Linux code.
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