Just to remind people after all the hacking going on this last few months [of which I was affected by the OPM identity theft] that we had quite a few viruses in a not so distant past…
MORRIS – November 2, 1988
This was one of the first worms to be ever distributed on the Internet. Several thousand military computers, universities, and scientific research centers were affect by this supposedly “harmless” worm, but a mistake on the part of creator Robert Morris caused it to spread extremely quickly.
MELISSA – March 26, 1999
The creator of Melissa named this virus after an escort he met in Florida. The virus affected almost 20% of computers worldwide, forwarding itself to the first 50 email addresses in the user’s Outlook. Very simple to program and deploy due to Microsoft early naive security model.
ILOVEYOU – May 4, 2000
With the irresistible subject line “ILOVEYOU” and “Love-Letter-for-you.txt.vbs” attachment, ILoveYou infected about 45 million Windows computers. Once enabled, it stole passwords and copied itself to emails in the user’s address book.
ANNA KOURNIKOVA – February 11, 2001
The Anna Kournikova worm allegedly contain pictures of the then famous tennis star. What really was inside was an attachment that quickly went through the Outlook address book and sent itself to everyone.
CODE RED – July 15, 2001
The virus named Code Red exploited a known buffer overflow vulnerability, allowing itself to attack computers running Microsoft’s IIS web server. Code was ran within the server running completely on memory.
SIRCAM – July 17, 2001
If a computer was running Windows 95, 98, and/or ME, it was a target for Sircam. It would grab random emails, email attachments, and documents to emails addresses in the host’s address book. The result was thousands of personal files being sent around to people.
NIMDA – September 18, 2001
Spell admin backwards and you get Nimda, a worm that spread rapidly in 2001 due to a myriad of propagation tricks such as email, infected websites, and network backdoors created by Code Red.
SQL SLAMMER – January 25, 2003
Probably one of the better named viruses, SQL Slammer caused a massive denial of service attack on Internet hosts. What resulted was a massive slowing of general Internet traffic due to the crippled routers breaking under the extreme traffic.
BLASTER – August 11, 2003
This worm would dive into Windows-based PC and was intended to create a DDOS attack on WindowsUpdate.com. Fortunately, this domain redirected to update.microsoft.com which could be temporarily turned off.
SOBIG.F – August 18, 2003
Infecting millions of Windows computers connected to the Internet, SoBig.F was hooked to an email attachment. It was later deactivated on September 10 of the same year, yet computers with outdated system clocks could still be vulnerable.
MYDOOM – January 26, 2004
Considered one of the fastest spreading email worms of its time, surpassing SoBig and ILoveYou, Mydoom caught a wild ride on email attachments and the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing network causing havoc all over the world.
SASSER – April 3, 2004
This worm infected computers that had a vulnerable network port. Windows machines infected by Sasser slowed down to a crawl or crashed completely. It is infamous for forcing Delta Airlines to ground several trans-Atlantic flights.
Prevention Is The Best Medicine
Cybersecurity training is everything, from system admins to end users. Classes such as Security+, Certified Ethical Hacker, and CISSP make sure your team is ready for any threats hackers can bring
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