TOP 10 COMPUTER VIRUSES

TOP 10 COMPUTER VIRUSES

Name: I Love You

Description:It took your contacts from your Outlook list. If you saw the e-mail message "I LOVE  YOU" and opened it, it would copy and send out the message again and again. Recipients, who didn't know what was happening, would execute the document only to have most of their files overwritten.
Type: Script Virus

Creator/Author: Onel De Guzman

Date Discovered: May 2000

Place of Origin: Philippines

Source of Language: Assembly

Platform: MsW

File Type: .vbs

Infection Length: commonly 512 bytes in length.

Reported Cost: $5.5 billion to $8.7 billion in damages

Name: Melissa

Description: Melissa is a macro virus that appeared in spring of 1999. The virus received a great deal of media attention and like Michelangelo caused little damage, although it was very widespread. Melissa began spreading exactly one month befor CIH released its payload, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in East Asia. It is one of the first viruses to achieve "rock star" status.
Type: Word macro virus

Creator/Author: "Kwyjibo"

Date Discovered: 1999.03.26

Place of Origin: Aberdeen, New Jersey USA

Source of Language: Visual Basic

Platform: MS Word on MS Windows

File Type: .doc

Infection Length: 1 macro module

Reported Cost: $1.1 billion

Name: Sadmind worm

Description:  a computer worm that caused a denial of service on some Internet hosts and dramatically slowed down general Internet traffic as easy as shutting the system down.
Type: Malware

Creator/Author:  David Smith

Date Discovered: 2003.01.25

Place of Origin:  Indonesia

Source of Language: Assembly

Platform: Ms Windows

File Type: UDP packet*

Infection Length: 404 bytes

Reported Cost: $1.2 billion

Name: Sasser

Description: It creates and executes a script file on the target named cmd.ftp, which causes the target computer to download Sasser from a worm-created FTP server on the infecting computer. The worm will be saved to the system folder. The downloaded file will have a file name of four or 
five random numbers, followed by _up.exe.
Type: Internet Worm

Creator/Author: Sven Jaschan

Date Discovered: 2004.04.30

Place of Origin: Waffensen, Germany 

Source of Language: C++

Platform: MS Windows

File Type: .exe

Infection Length: 15,872

Reported Cost: $18.1 billion

Name: Nimda

Description:  is one of the first worms capable of running itself without the user even opening the email. It is also the first to modify sites to offer copies of itself for download. It also has a viral component that infects executable files.
Type: Multi-vector worm

Creator/Author: [unknown]

Date Discovered: 2001.09.18

Place of Origin: China

Source of Language: C++

Platform: MsWindows

File Type: .exe

Infection Length: 27136 bytes

Reported Cost: $2.6 billion

Name: Code red

Description: This is yet another highly widespread and damaging virus (which was, incidentally, named after a short-lived Mountain Dew variant) that has infected as many as three hundred sixty thousand computers in just one day. It's also the most difficult virus to remove in a system, because it can easily re-infect a machine that has just been cleaned. The amounts of resources and IT personnel time it ate up were also staggering.
Type: Internet Worm

Creator/Author: [unknown]

Date Discovered: 2001.07.13

Place of Origin: China

Source of Language: Assembly

Platform: MS IIS Server

File Type: ida

Infection Length:

Reported Cost: $2.75 Billion

Name: Blaster

Description: The system will receive code that exploits a DCOM RPC vulnerability (described in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-026) from the Blaster worm on an already infected computer coming through TCP port 135. There is an 80% chance that the worm will send exploit code specific to Windows XP an 20% that it will be specific to Windows 2000. If the exploit code does not match the system, the RPC subsystem will fail. On Windows XP and Server 2003, this causes a system reboot. In Windows 2000 and NT 4.0, this causes the system to be unresponsive.
Type: Internet Worm

Creator/Author:

Date Discovered: 2003.08.11

Place of Origin: Unknown*

Source of Language: C

Platform: Ms Windows

File Type: .exe

Infection Length: 6,176 bytes

Reported Cost: $320 million

Name: Morris

Description: was one of the very first worms ever made. It was quite an infamous achievement for malware created by a Cornell graduate student because it ultimately led to its creator's conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (Morris was the first man convicted under that act, in fact).
Type: Internet worm

Creator/Author: Robert Morris, Jr.

Date Discovered: 1988.11.02

Place of Origin:

Source of Language: C

Platform: BSD, SunOS

File Type:

Infection Length:

Reported Cost: $1 million

Name: Welchia

Description: This is believed to be one of the most peculiar worms in computer history because it was developed by a white hat hacker to actually clear out the ever-growing Blaster worm infection before deleting itself. In effect, it can be considered the first (and probably only) positive, non-malignant worm ever created.
Type: Worm

Creator/Author: [unknown]

Date Discovered: 2003.08.18

Place of Origin: China ( but not so sure) http://www.crime-research.org/news/2003/08/Mess2201.html

Source of Language: C++

Platform: Ms Windows

File Type: .exe

Infection Length: 12800 bytes

Reported Cost: ?

Name: Elk Cloner

Description: This was a relatively harmless floppy disk virus written in 1982 by a high school student. It specifically targeted Apple II computers and it merely caused affected machines to show a poem written by its maker on every fiftieth boot.
Type: Boot sector virus

Creator/Author: Richard Skrenta

Date Discovered: 1982

Place of Origin: Mount Lebanon, PA, USA

Source of Language: Assembly

Platform: Apple II

File Type:

Infection Length:

Reported Cost: $31.7 million.