NEW

COMMON
VIRUSES
SUB. BY:
Meryl Joy Villanueva
SUB. TO:
Mrs. Imelda Espiritu
1. The Morris worm
In 1998 Robert Morris, a university student, unleashed a worm which affected 10 percent of all
the computers connected to the internet (at the time the net was estimated to consist of 60,000
computers), slowing them down to a halt. Morris is now an associate professor at MIT.
2. The Concept virus
The Concept virus, accidentally shipped on a CD-ROM supplied by Microsoft in 1995, was the
first virus to infect Microsoft Word documents. Within days it became the most widespread virus
the world had ever seen, taking advantage of the fact that computer users shared documents
via email.
3. CIH
The Chernobyl virus (also known as CIH) triggers on April 26 each year, the anniversary of the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It overwrites a chip inside PCs effectively paralysing the entire
computer. Its author, Chen Ing Hau, was caught by the authorities in Taiwan.
4. The Anna Kournikova worm
The Anna Kournikova worm posed as a picture of the tennis player, but was in fact a virus
written by Jan de Wit, an obsessed admirer from the Netherlands. He ended up receiving a
community service sentence.
5. ILOVEYOU
The Love Bug flooded internet users with ILOVEYOU messages in May 2000, forwarding itself
to everybody in the user's address book. It was designed to steal internet access passwords for
its Filipino creator.
6. The Melissa virus
The Melissa virus, written by David L Smith in homage to a Florida stripper, was the first
successful email-aware virus and inserted a quote from The Simpsons in to Word documents.
Smith was later sentenced to jail for causing over $80 million worth of damage.
7. The Blaster Worm
The Blaster worm launched a denial of service attack against Microsoft's website in 2003, and
infected millions of computers around the world by exploiting a security hole in Microsoft's
software. Its author has never been found.
8. Netsky and Sasser
Sven Jaschan, a German teenager, was found guilty of writing the Netsky and Sasser worms.
Jaschan was found to be responsible for 70 per cent of all the malware seen spreading over the
internet at the time, but escaped prison and was eventually hired by a security company as an
"ethical hacker".
9. OSX/RSPlug Trojan
In November 2007, the first example of financially-motivated malware for Apple Macs was
discovered in the wild. The launch of the OSX/RSPlug Trojan increased fears that Apple's
platform may be targeted more by hackers in the future.
10. Storm worm
The Storm worm, originally posing as breaking news of bad weather hitting Europe, infected
computers around the world in 2007. Millions of infected PCs were taken over by hackers and
used to spread spam and steal identities.
11. Code Red
Code Red first surfaced on 2001 and was discovered by two eEye Digital Security employees. It
was named Code Red because 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. Conficker
Also known as Downup or Downadup, Conficker is a worm of unknown authorship for
Windows that made its first appearance in 2008. 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. It was one of the largest known worm
infections to ever surface causing an estimate damage of $9 billion.
16. Stuxnet
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. It was estimated that Stuxnet
has managed to ruin one fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and that nearly 60% of infections
were concentrated in Iran.
17. Mydoom
Surfacing in 2004, Mydoom was a worm for Windows that became one of
the fastest spreading email worm since ILOVEYOU. The author is unknown and it is believed
that the creator was paid to create it since it contains the text message, “andy; I’m just doing my
job, nothing personal, sorry,”. It was named by McAfee employee Craig Schmugar, one of the
people who had originally discovered it. ‘mydom’ was a line of text in the program’s code (my
domain) and sensing this was going to be big, added ‘doom’ into it.
18. CryptoLocker
CryptoLocker is a form of Trojan horse ransomware targeted at computers running Windows.
It uses several methods to spread itself, such as email, and once a computer is infected, it
will proceed to encrypt certain files on the hard drive and any mounted storage connected to it
with RSA public key cryptography. While it is easy enough to remove the malware from the
computer, the files will still remain encrypted. The only way to unlock the files is to pay a
ransom by a deadline. If the deadline is not met, the ransom will increase significantly or the
decryption keys deleted. The ransom usually amount to $400 in prepaid cash or bitcoin.
19. Flashback
Though not as damaging as the rest of the malware on this list, this is one of the few Mac
malware to have gain notoriety as it showed that Macs are not immune. The Trojan was
first discovered in 2011 by antivirus company Intego as a fake Flash install. In its newer
incarnation, a user simply needs to have Java enabled (which is likely the majority of us). It
propagates itself by using compromised websites containing JavaScript code that will download
the payload. Once installed, the Mac becomes part of a botnet of other infected Macs.
20. Botnets
The web is also where you risk contracting a drive-by bot infection that will enlist your computer
as an agent in a fraudster's arsenal."A botnet is a collection of infected PCs that the bad guys
now own," Perry said. "Botnets are the source of all spam – they're used for ID theft, extortion,
industrial espionage and finding other web pages to infect. I would call it the Swiss Army Knife
of the malware world. It does a lot of things for a lot of people."Like the majority of malware
software, botnets are asymptomatic. Until you wake up and find your bank account has been
drained, that is, or discover that your ID has been appropriated for use by someone else.
*Scareware
Fake antivirus programs, which are often referred to as "scareware," is the third and arguably
most irritating leg of the malware stool.With scareware, a warning pops up on your computer
screen telling you that your computer is infected and attempts to sell you a program to disinfect
the program. This is the ultimate no-win situation.If you click anywhere on the warning, you get
infected. If you ignore the warning, it will never go away. And if you fall for the ruse and buy the
fake antivirus program, your computer will then become another warrior in the scammer's botnet
army.