Ever since the computer was created, viruses were created too. Overtime, we have heard about several different kinds of viruses that affected the computer but some of the viruses were much serious than others.
In the history of PC, there have been some very serious viruses and here are some of them:
Melissa Virus
Melissa was a virus created by David L Smith. The man created the virus back in 1999 on MS Word Macro. The virus was intended to spread via email messages.
According to the creator of the deadly virus, the virus was named Melissa after an “exotic dancer from Florida”, as CNN reports.
How Did Melissa Work:
The Melissa virus pushes users to open a file in their mail message, with a subject saying “Here is the file/document you asked for; don’t show the document to anyone else”. After the user downloads the file, the virus gets activated and sends itself to another fifty people in the receiver’s contact list.
Melissa caught the attention of the US government, the FBI and the masses. David, who created the virus, was found guilty of his doings and was sent behind bars for 20 months. David was also fined $5000. According to the FBI, the Melissa virus brought havoc on the US government as well as the privately operating networks.
The ILOVEYOU Virus
The ILOVEYOU virus is also one of the most famous viruses in the history of computers. ILOVEYOU virus circled the internet in 2000. The virus started spreading from the Philippines or in simpler terms, it was created in the Philippines.
The ILOVEYOU virus also spread just like Melissa virus but unlike the Melissa virus, this one was a worm. The subject of the email that contained the virus was “love letter from a secret lover/admirer”.
How Did ILOVEYOU Work:
Once the user downloaded the virus, the virus multiplied itself and made its way to different hard drives and saved itself in different folders. The ILOVEYOU virus did a lot of damage, way more than the Melissa. The virus sent itself to other users, replaced different files with ILOVEYOU copies and others.
Some estimates suggest that the virus caused a total damage of $10 billion. It has also been reported that the creator of the virus was Onel de Guzman but the name of ILOVEYOU virus’s creator isn’t known for sure.
Nimda Virus
Nimda virus struck the internet a year after ILOVEYOU. Nimda is one of the most popular and fastest spreading computer viruses of all times. Nimda was again in the form of a worm, just as ILOVEYOU.
How Did Nimda Work:
Nimda’s aim was to target internet servers. The virus could also creep into home computers but the actual purpose of the virus was to make its way inside the internet servers and stop internet traffic. The virus was deadly as even users whose computers had limited access could be hacked via Nimda.
Nimda caused a lot of destruction, as it was reported that some network systems collapsed due to the virus.
Code Red And Code Red II Virus
Both these viruses also came up in the same year as Nimda in the form of worms, again. The virus worked by exploiting the vulnerability of an issue found in Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows NT: the buffer overflow issue.
How Did Code Red And Code Red II Work:
The first of the two, Code Red, started sending DDoS attacks on every computer in the White House by transmitting a high amount of data in the White House web servers, causing the machines to overload.
Code Red was followed by Code Red II but both viruses were different in the sense that the successor to Code Red didn’t obey its master. To solve the issue, Microsoft rolled out software patches to solve the security issues in Windows 2000 as well as Windows NT.
The patches however failed to remove the infected viruses. Users had to clean their systems themselves. The software patches did however help in preventing a machine from getting attacked.
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