Computer viruses have come a long way from the early days of personal
computers, when teenage hackers competed for bragging rights, creating
malware designed for mischief or random mayhem. Now, the hackers have
gone professional, and their ambitions have grown; rather than amateurs
working out of their parents' basement, malware creators are often part
of an underworld criminal gang, or working directly for a foreign
government or intelligence agency. As the stakes have grown, so too has
the potential damage and destruction brought on by malware.
1) Stuxnet (2009-2010)
The arrival of Stuxnet was
like a cartoon villain come to life: it was the first computer virus
designed specifically to cause damage in the real, as opposed to
virtual, world. While previous malware programs may have caused
secondary physical problems, Stuxnet was unique in that it targeted
software that controls industrial systems. Specifically, Stuxnet was
designed to damage machinery at Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in
Natanz. Based on the available information, including data from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, experts believe Stuxnet caused a
large number of Iran’s centrifuges—essentially giant washing machines
used to enrich uranium—to spin out of control and self-destruct. Though
Stuxnet was discovered in 2010, it is believed to have first infected
computers in Iran in 2009.
2) Conficker Virus (2009)
In 2009, a new computer
worm crawled its way into millions of Windows-based PCs around the
world, creating a massive botnet army of remotely controlled computers
capable of stealing financial data and other information. Its complexity
made it difficult to stop, and the virus prompted the creation of a
coalition of experts dedicated to stopping its spread. At its height,
the Conficker worm infected millions of computers, leading anti-virus
researchers to call it the “super bug,” or “super worm.” But the real
mystery of Conficker, which still infects a large number of computers,
is that no one knows what it was meant to do: the botnet army was never
used for any specific purpose, to the best of anyone’s knowledge.
Conficker’s real purpose still confounds security experts.
3) agent.btz (2008)
This piece of malware’s claim to
fame is that it temporarily forced the Pentagon to issue a blanket ban
on thumb drives and even contributed to the creation of an entirely new
military department, U.S. Cyber Command. Agent.btz spreads through
infected thumb drives, installing malware that steals data. When
agent.btz was found on Pentagon computers in 2008, officials suspected
the work of foreign spies. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense William
Lynne later wrote that agent.btz created “a digital beachhead, from
which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control.”
Though some anti-virus experts have disputed the contention that the
virus was the creation of a foreign intelligence agency, its effect was
to make cyber war a formal part of U.S. military strategy.
4) Zeus (2007)
There is no shortage of malware kits
that target personal information, but Zeus has become the go-to tool for
many of today’s cyber criminals and is readily available for sale in
the cyber crime underworld. It can be used to pilfer passwords as well
as files, helping to create a literal underground economy for
compromised identities that can be bought and sold for as little 50
cents. In the age of Internet banking and online shopping, a compromised
identity is much more than just a name and social security number: it’s
your address, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and even your secret
security questions (your first pet, your favorite teacher, or your best
friend from grade school).
5) PoisonIvy (2005)
PoisonIvy is a computer security
nightmare; it allows the attacker to secretly control the infected
user’s computer. Malware like PoisonIvy is known as a “remote access
trojan,” because it provides full control to the perpetrator through a
backdoor. Once the virus is installed, the perpetrator can activate the
controls of the targeted computer to record or manipulate its content or
even use the computer’s speaker and webcam to record audio and video.
Once thought of as a tool for amateur hackers, PoisonIvy has been used
in sophisticated attacks against dozens of Western firms, including
those involved in defense and chemical industries, according to a white paper written by Symantec, the computer security firm. The attacks were traced back to China.
6) MyDoom (2004)
MyDoom muscled its way into the
malware world in 2004, quickly infecting some one million computers and
launching a massive distributed denial of service attack, which
overwhelms a target by flooding it with information from multiple
systems. The virus spread through email as what appeared to be a bounced
message. When the unsuspecting victim opened the email, the malicious
code downloaded itself and then pilfered the new victim’s Outlook
address book. From there, it spread to the victim’s friends, family and
colleagues. MyDoom spread faster than any worm seen prior.
7) Fizzer (2003)
By 2003, many worms were spreading
over e-mail, but Fizzer was an entirely new creature. If earlier worms,
like Code Red (see below), were about mischief, Fizzer was all about
money. While some initially dismissed the seriousness of the worm
because it wasn’t as fast moving as Code Red, Fizzer was more insidious.
“What makes Fizzer stand out is that it's the first instance of a worm
created for financial gain,” says Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher
at Kaspersky, an anti-virus company. “Computers infected with Fizzer
started sending out pharmacy spam.” In other words, Fizzer didn’t just
take over your address book to spread for the sake of spreading, it used
your address book to send out the now familiar porn and pills spam.
Fizzer was followed by better-known spam-inducing worms, like SoBig,
which became threatening enough that Microsoft even offered a $250,000
bounty for information leading to the arrest of its creator.
8) Slammer (2003)
In January 2003, the
fast-spreading Slammer proved that an Internet worm could disrupt
private and public services, a harbinger for future mayhem. Slammer
works by releasing a deluge of network packets, units of data
transmitted over the Internet, bringing the Internet on many servers to a
near screeching halt. Through a classic denial of service attack,
Slammer had a quite real effect on key services. Among its list of
victims: Bank of America’s ATMs, a 911 emergency response system in
Washington State, and perhaps most disturbingly, a nuclear plant in Ohio.
9) Code Red (2001)
Compared to modern malware, Code
Red seems like an almost kinder, gentler version of a threat. But when
it swept across computers worldwide in 2001, it caught security experts
off guard by exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Internet Information Server. That allowed the worm to deface and take down some websites.
Perhaps most memorably, Code Red successfully brought down the
whitehouse.gov website and forced other government agencies to
temporarily take down their own public websites as well. Though later
worms have since overshadowed Code Red, it’s still remembered by
anti-virus experts as a turning point for malware because of its rapid
spread.
10) Love Letter/I LOVE YOU (2000)
Back in 2000,
millions of people made the mistake of opening an innocent looking email
attachment labeled simply, “I Love You.” Instead of revealing the
heartfelt confession of a secret admirer, as perhaps readers had hoped,
the file unleashed a malicious program that overwrote the users’ image
files. Then like an old-fashioned chain letter gone nuclear, the virus
e-mailed itself to the first 50 contacts in the user’s Windows address
book. While by today’s standards, Love Letter is almost quaint, it did
cause wide-scale problems for computer users. It only took hours for
Love Letter to become a global pandemic, in part because it played on a
fundamental human emotion: the desire to be loved. In that sense, Love
Letter could be considered the first socially engineered computer virus.
source : http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Top-Ten-Most-Destructive-Computer-Viruses.html
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