Virus History ?2001 to Present

After the flurry of viruses that haunted 2001, 2002 was amazingly quiet. Unfortunately, 2003 took off again.

January saw the SQL Slammer worm infect over 75,000 systems in about ten minutes. It attacked a flaw in Microsoft抯 SQL Server, and basically slowed down the entire Internet.

The Blaster worm attacked in August. It was meant to cause a Denial of Service attack against the Windows Update website, by causing all infected systems to flood the site on August 15th. The programmer was convicted because investigators actually found his name in the virus code.

Only a few days later, SoBig attacked. This was another emailing virus. After infection, it searched the files on the hard drive for email addresses and sent itself to any it found.

October saw the release of the Sober emailing virus. Sober was notable in that it would shut off antivirus programs after infection.

The fastest-spreading virus to date was MyDoom, which struck in January 2004. At one point, MyDoom was responsible for 1 out of every 10 emails on the Internet.

2004 also saw the Witty, Sasser, and Santy virus outbreaks, and in 2005, Zotob and Samy.

In 2006, the first Mac OS/X virus was announced, as well as the first MySpace attack, 揕ordoftheNoose,? This program changed the names of MySpace profiles, and locked out users to keep the names it set. At one point, as many as 70% of all MySpace profiles were infected.

So far in 2007, another MySpace virus has erupted, and the Peacomm Virus attacked. Peacomm was an email that claimed to be a video clip.

Historically, most viruses have used very similar attack routes. Either they carried an attachment which the user had to open, or they took advantage of a known flaw in the system which had not yet been fixed. The moral of the story is this: Keep your updates current, and be wary of unusual attachments.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

History of Computer Viruses since 1989-1999

Robert Morris抯 Internet Worm of 1988 was the biggest news in virus history for several years. Until 1992, most virus news was much quieter.

In 1989, for example, Ghostball was released. This was the first virus able to attack different kinds of targets. Before Ghostball, viruses were classified by their attack, like 揻ile infector?or 揵oot sector virus.? Ghostball was the first Multipartite virus, because it could follow several attack patterns.

In 1990, a programmer named Mark Washburn demonstrated a Polymorphic virus.called 1260. This virus could actually change the structure of it抯 own code梞eaning, every time it infected a new system, it looked different while doing the same thing. In effect, this kind of virus 揾ides?from anti-virus software by wearing disguises.

Michelangelo was the first virus to achieve stardom. It was discovered in 1991, and was predicted to cause incredible amounts of damage when it reached it抯 trigger date, March 6th, 1992 (March 6th is Michelangelo抯 birthday). If an infected system is booted on March 6th, the virus will erase the hard drive. Despite doomsday warnings made by the press and the antivirus industry of 揳t least five million infected systems at risk,?only about 10,000-20,000 computers worldwide were hit by the virus.

The Concept virus was discovered in 1995. Concept is short for 揚roof of Concept,?and it was designed to show how viruses could be written in the macro language programmed into Microsoft Word. By 2004, roughly 75% of all viruses are macro viruses.

The CIH virus, later renamed 揅hernobyl,?appeared in 1998. This was a very damaging virus that was not only programmed to erase hard drives but also tried to erase BIOS chips. For the first time in history, a virus had managed to actually damage the hardware it was running on. Fortunately, CIH wasn抰 very good at it, and only damaged a handful of systems.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

History of Computer Viruses to 1989

Science fiction writer David Gerrold wrote 揥hen H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One?and published it in 1972. In it, a computer program called 揤IRUS?spreads from computer to computer, before it is finally killed by another program, appropriately called 揤ACCINE.? Just like communication satellites, moon landings, and waterbeds, science fiction predicted the future.

The first program to actually spread from one computer to another appeared around the same time. The Creeper virus infected a system across the Arpanet, the network of computers that eventually became the Internet we know today. Interestingly enough, the Reaper program designed to kill the Creeper virus was also a virus.

The first wide-scale virus infection was Elk Cloner on the Apple II computer system in 1981. Since the Apple II kept it抯 operating system on floppy disk, it was very easy to infect the system, and a surprisingly large number of viruses were written for Apple computers.

Five years later, the first PC viruses began to appear, starting with The Pakistani Brain. It was written by a pair of brothers in Pakistan.

1987 saw the first boot-sector viruses, such as Yale, Ping Pong, and Stoned. Boot sector viruses infect a computer if an infected disk is left in the drive with the power off. The Jerusalem virus also appeared that same year, and was one of the first viruses to have a destructive payload梚f the virus was running on Friday the 13th, it would ruin all executable files on the computer.

Robert Tappan Morris made computer history in 1988. His computer worm was one of the first to exploit 揃uffer Overrun?errors, and spread rapidly across the network. It would run multiple times on infected systems, eventually crowding out anything else on that system. The worm brought the Internet to it抯 knees until it was found and removed.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

History of Viruses, 1999 through 2001

The Melissa virus was the big story of 1999. Named after a lap dancer, Melissa was the first major emailing virus. Upon infection, it used Microsoft Outlook to send copies of itself to the first fifty names in the address book. March, 1999, saw it spread across the Internet, clogging up email servers everywhere it went.

1999 was a busy year, with the ExploreZip virus appearing in Jerusalem in June. This one had a fake Zip file attached called "Zipped_Files.EXE." If the user double-clicked the file, it would put up a fake window saying "sorry, this zip file is corrupt." It would then go on to email everyone in the address book, and follow that by destroying documents and files on the hard drive.

The LoveLetter, or "I Love You," virus hit in May of 2000. It was another emailing virus, this time using VBScript. The user would receive an email with an attachment usually called "love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs". Notice the dual extension at the end. Many Windows systems will not display the extension, so the ".vbs" would disappear. The user, thinking he's looking at a .TXT file, feels free to open it, and thereby infects his system. The LoveLetter virus is widely known as the most expensive virus attack in history, with expert estimates upwards of ten billion dollars worth of damage.

2001 was the banner year for viruses. Sadmind in May, Sircam and Code Red in July, Code Red II in August, Nimda in September, and Klez in October. Sircam randomly selected files from an infected machine and sent them out in emails. Nimda attacked through five different methods, including security holes opened by Sadmind and Code Red II.

Through all of these virus attacks, many computer experts pointed to Microsoft as the problem--because most of these viruses were attacking security flaws in Microsoft programs, especially Internet Explorer and Outlook.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.