10 Most Disruptive
Computer Viruses in Internet History
Each
year, US businesses and
citizens lose billions upon billions of dollars due to the destruction caused
by computer viruses. We’re all familiar with that sinking feeling when the
first signs show — your browser freezes, your system slows, error messages pop
up repeatedly, and bizarre antivirus software you never installed “scans” your
computer. In worst case scenarios, it can spread to other computers, erase your
hard drive, and ruin your machine altogether. A problem that predates the
internet, the first virus was created 40 years ago, setting forth a problem
that has grown with our dependence on computers. The following bugs are among
the worst in history, and have caused many businesses and people to seek some
form of insurance just
in case.
A
first of its kind, the Elk Cloner didn’t harm a lot of computers, but it did
set an unsettling precedent as the first wild virus, one that can freely spread
on its own. Created by Richard Skrenta, a computer savvy high school prankster,
it merely infected boot sectors, featuring a threatening message that read “It
will get on all your disks. It will infiltrate your chips. Yes it’s Cloner!”
Fittingly, Skrenta is now a computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur
with extensive experience in the industry.
2. Brain (1986)
Viruses
were made more complicated and resilient with the formation of Brain, the first
full-stealth virus capable of evading early disk utility programs. Infecting
floppy disks, it caused only minor problems, as it slowed the disks and
sometimes made them unusable. Brain originated in Lahore, Pakistan and its
effects surfaced in 1987 and 1988, when infections were discovered at the
University of Delaware and the Providence Journal-Bulletin, the latter of which
experienced the deletion of work as a result. Today’s viruses that refuse to
die are all grandchildren of Brain, which is why it will forever be considered
among the most disruptive — it bred them.
The
sanctity of the Internet was breached with the proliferation of the Morris
Worm, which garnered mainstream attention because it resulted in the first US
conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. By attacking
vulnerabilities in Unix sendmail, finger and rhs/rexec multiple times, it could
cause programs to become unusable. Approximately 6,000 UNIX systems were
infected by it, a disruption that couldn’t be ignored. Creator Robert Tappan
Morris, a student at Cornell University, was convicted and sentenced to three
years probation, 400 hours of community service, and given a $10,000 fine.
Currently, the former outlaw is a tenured professor at MIT.
As
the internet was rapidly expanding in the late ’90s, the first truly feared
viruses emerged. The CIH virus did the most damage, as it overwrote critical
information in system drives and corrupted system BIOS. Present in several
thousand IBM Aptivas, it first surfaced on a large scale in Asia — it was
created in Taiwan by Chen Ing-Hau — destroying numerous PCs. Measures of
protection were implemented, but the virus returned in varying forms in the
early 2000s.
Named
after a lap dancer who creator David Smith met in Florida, Melissa rose to fame
after it infected numerous mail systems, essentially shutting them down. When
it arrived in inboxes, the message was titled “Important Message From [account
sending the virus]” and contained an attachment with a list of 80 porn sites.
Most disconcerting was its ability to send other documents that could’ve held
sensitive information. For the trouble he caused, Smith served 20 months in a
federal prison and paid a $5,000 fine.
The
desire to be loved might explain why so many people opened those pesky emails
with the subject line of “ILOVEYOU.” Readers were enticed to open the
attachment titled “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs” that appeared to be sent from
someone they knew, causing the spamming of contacts in their address books and
changes to their systems. Tens of millions of computers were infected and $8.75
billion in damage resulted. Onel A. de Guzman, a student of AMA Computer
University in Makati, Philippines, admitted to being the culprit, claiming that
he accidently discharged the virus.>/p>
The
aptly named CodeRed virus originated in the Philippines and featured the
memorable text string “Hacked by Chinese,” exploiting indexing software in
Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS). Because it ran entirely on
memory, infected computers’ hard drives were erased. Estimated to have affected
one to two million people, CodeRed caused $2.75 billion in damage and even
received the attention of the FBI, which classified it as worthy of crippling
the entire internet.
Microsoft
was compelled to offer a cash reward to people who provided information leading
to the capture of the creator of Blaster, a worm that launched a denial of
service attack on the company’s website. Damage totaled $320 million, and,
unfortunately for the many who dealt with it, the culprit was never found. One
can only image the wrath he’d face given the punishment levied on the creator
of the B variant, 18-year-old Jeffrey Lee Parson, who was sentenced to 18
months in prison in 2005.
According
to some sources, MyDoom is the most destructive and costly worm in the history
of the Internet, causing $38.5 billion in damage and effecting 20 to 30 percent
of worldwide email traffic. Rapidly spread through email and the popular file
sharing application Kazaa, it presented itself as a transmission error and
spread to other emails by prompting readers to open its attachment. As with the
Blaster Worm episode, the creator of MyDoom wasn’t found, but some have
speculated that he or she was paid and lived in Russia.
If you’ve contracted a
virus in recent years that presented itself as antivirus software, then it may
have been Conflicker. Its purpose is to steal personal information from the
owner of the infected computer, sticking around by disabling already existing,
legitimate antivirus software. At one point, it controlled more than seven
million computers worldwide, with several different variants that served to
strengthen the original. The authors are still unknown, and are said to be
tracking anti-malware developments designed to eradicate it.
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