List of new computer viruses

It will then launch a denial of service attack on several IP address, famous among them was the attack on the White House website. It also allows backdoor access to the server, allowing for remote access to the machine. The most memorable symptom is the message it leaves behind on affected web pages, "Hacked By Chinese!

A total of million servers were affected, which is amazing when you consider there were 6 million IIS servers at the time. Named after an exotic dancer from Florida, it was created by David L.

Smith in It started as an infected Word document that was posted up on the alt. This got people curious and when it was downloaded and opened, it would trigger the macro inside and unleash its payload. It also sometimes corrupted documents by inserting a Simpsons reference into them. Smith was eventually caught when they traced the Word document to him. The file was uploaded using a stolen AOL account and with their help, law enforcement was able to arrest him less than a week since the outbreak began.

He cooperated with the FBI in capturing other virus creators, famous among them the creator of the Anna Kournikova virus. A Windows worm first discovered in , 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 , t he 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. This led to more than a million infections , taking out critical infrastructures, such as airlines, news agencies, public transportation, hospitals, public transport, etc. Jaschen was tried as a minor and received a 21 month suspended sentence.

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 , 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. The entire operation was sophisticated, involving people from around the world to act as money mules to smuggle and transfer cash to the ringleaders in Eastern Europe. In late , the creator of Zeus announced his retirement but many experts believe this to be false. BHP also has the distinction of being the first stealth virus; that is, a virus that avoids detection by hiding the changes it makes to a target system and its files.

The cover image depicted viruses as cute, googly eyed cartoon insects crawling all over a desktop computer. Up to this point, computer viruses were relatively harmless. Yes, they were annoying, but not destructive. So how did computer viruses go from nuisance threat to system destroying plague?

The MacMag virus caused infected Macs to display an onscreen message on March 2, The infected Freehand was then copied and shipped to several thousand customers, making MacMag the first virus spread via legitimate commercial software product. The Morris worm knocked out more than 6, computers as it spread across the ARPANET , a government operated early version of the Internet restricted to schools and military installations.

The Morris worm was the first known use of a dictionary attack. As the name suggests, a dictionary attack involves taking a list of words and using it to try and guess the username and password combination of a target system.

Robert Morris was the first person charged under the newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act , which made it illegal to mess with government and financial systems, and any computer that contributes to US commerce and communications. In his defense, Morris never intended his namesake worm to cause so much damage.

According to Morris, the worm was designed to test security flaws and estimate the size of the early Internet. A bug caused the worm to infect targeted systems over and over again, with each subsequent infection consuming processing power until the system crashed. Victims received a 5.

Joseph L. Popp, intended to draw parallels between his digital creation and the deadly AIDS virus. In an era before Bitcoin and other untraceable cryptocurrencies, victims had to send ransom funds to a PO box in Panama in order to receive the decryption software and regain access to their files.

There were 2. By the end of the decade, that number would surpass million. Traditional AV works by comparing the files on your computer with a giant list of known viruses. Every virus on the list is made of computer code and every snippet of code has a unique signature—like a fingerprint. If a snippet of code found on your computer matches that of a known virus in the database, the file is flagged. While each copy of the virus looked and acted the same, the underlying code was different.

This is called polymorphic code, making the first polymorphic virus. Melissa was a macro virus. Viruses of this type hide within the macro language commonly used in Microsoft Office files. Opening up a viral Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, etc.

Melissa was the fastest spreading virus up to that point, infecting approximately , computers, Medium reported. Viruses paved the way for a whole new generation of destructive malware. Cryptojackers stealthily used our computers to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Ransomware held our computers hostage. Banking Trojans, like Emotet , stole our financial information.

Spyware and keyloggers shoulder surfed us from across the web, stealing our usernames and passwords. Old-school viruses were, for the most part, a thing of the past. Shamoon targeted computers and network systems belonging to Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, in response to Saudi government policy decisions in the Middle East. In a perfect example of what comes around goes around, cybersecurity researchers have suggested the attack started with an infected USB storage drive—the modern equivalent of the floppy disks used to carry the very first virus, Elk Cloner.

The victim is served up a bogus pop-up ad after landing on a spoofed website or as a result of an adware infection. In a recent example , scammers used malvertising to link victims to malicious support sites after victims searched for things like cooking tips and recipes. People years-old and over were five times more likely to report being a victim of a tech support scam.

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Professional Reviews. Affiliate Commissions. Reviews Guidelines. Sophie Anderson This article contains. Clop Ransomware 2. Fake Windows Updates Hidden Ransomware 3. Zeus Gameover 4. RaaS 5. News Malware Attacks 6. Fleeceware 7. IoT Device Attacks 8. Social Engineering 9. Cryptojacking Read Review Visit Website. Share It: 0. About the Author Sophie Anderson Cybersecurity researcher and tech journalist.

About the Author Sophie Anderson has spent the last 10 years working as a software engineer for some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley. She now works as a cybersecurity consultant and tech journalist, helping everyday netizens understand how to stay safe and protected in an online world.