The History of Computer Viruses.
Computer technology has created many benefits but its greatest danger is computer viruses. Here is a history of those viruses
FIRST PC VIRUS! Creeper
Creeper was a worm — a type of computer virus that replicates itself and spreads to other systems.
1974 - Rabbit
Rabbit virus, more a fork bomb than a virus, is written. The Rabbit virus makes multiple copies of itself on a single computer (and was named Rabbit for the speed at which it did so) until it clogs the system, reducing system performance, before finally, the computer can't take it anymore and crashes.
1980’s
A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems, was created by high school student Richard Skrenta originally as a prank. The Apple II was particularly vulnerable due to the storage of its operating system on a floppy disk.
1986
January: The Brain boot sector virus is released. Brain is considered the first IBM PC compatible virus.
1987
Appearance of the Vienna virus, which was subsequently neutralized – the first time this had happened on the IBM platform.
1988
March 1: The Ping Pong Virus, an MS-DOS boot sector virus, is discovered at the University of Turn in Italy.
April: 1994
OneHalf is a DOS-based computer virus.
1995 - Concept
The first Macro virus, called Concept is created. It attacked Microsoft Word documents.
Staog - 1996
Staog, the first Linux virus attacks Linux machines.
1998
June 2:
The first version of the CIH Virus appears. It is the first known virus able to erase flash ROM BIOS content.
1999
January 20: The Happy99 worm first appeared. It invisibly attaches itself to emails, displays fireworks to hide the changes being made, and wishes the user a happy New Year. It modifies system files related to Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.
March 26: The Melissa worm was released, targeting Microsoft Word and Outlook-based systems, and creating considerable network traffic.
June 6: The ExploreZIP worm, which destroys Microsoft Office documents, was first detected.
December 30: The kak worm is a JavaScript computer worm that spread itself by exploiting a bug in Outlook Express.
2000’s
May 5: The ILOVEYOU worm (also known as the Love Letter, VBS, or Love Bug worm), a computer worm written in VBScript and using social engineering techniques, infected millions of Windows computers worldwide within a few hours of its release.
(Fun Fact: This Virus also infected my Dad and his brother had to isolate it on a floppy disk!)
June 28: The Pikachu is believed to be the first computer virus geared at children. It contains the character "Pikachu" from the Pokemon series. The operating systems affected by this worm are Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME.
2001
February 11: The Anna Kornikova hits e-mail servers hard by sending e-mail to contacts in the Microsoft Outlook addressbook. Its creator, Jan de Wit, was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.
March 13: Magistr, also called Disembowler, is discovered. It is a complex email worm for Windows systems with multiple payloads that trigger months apart from each other. It targets members of the Law profession by searching the files on a user's computer for various keywords relating to court proceedings, activating if such are found.
May 8: The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Solaris and Microsoft IIS.
July: The Sircam worm is released, spreading through Microsoft systems via e-mail and unprotected network shares.
July 13: The Code Red Worm attacking the Index Server ISAPI Extension in Microsoft Internet Information Services is released.
August 4: A complete re-write of the Code Red Worm Code Red II begins aggressively spreading onto Microsoft systems, primarily in China.
September 18: The Nimda worm is discovered and spreads through a variety of means including vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and backdoors left by Code Red II and Sadmind worm.
October 26: The Klez worm is first identified. It exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.
2011
SpyEye and Zeus merged code is seen. New variants attack mobile phone banking information.
Anti-Spyware 2011, a Trojan horse that attacks Windows 9x, 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7, posing as an anti-spyware program. It disables security-related processes of anti-virus programs, while also blocking access to the Internet, which prevents updates.
Summer 2011: The Morto worm attempts to propagate itself to additional computers via the Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Morto spreads by forcing infected systems to scan for Windows servers allowing RDP login. Once Morto finds an RDP-accessible system, it attempts to log into a domain or local system account named 'Administrator' using several common passwords. A detailed overview of how the worm works – along with the password dictionary Morto uses – was done by Imperva.
July 13: the ZeroAccess rootkit (also known as Sirefef or max++) was discovered.
September 1: Duqu is a worm thought to be related to the Stuxnet worm. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security CrySYSLab of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary discovered the threat, analysed the malware, and wrote a 60-page report naming the threat Duqu. Duqu gets its name from the prefix "~DQ" it gives to the names of files it creates
2015
The BASHLITE malware is leaked leading to a massive spike in DDoS attacks.
Linux.Wifatch is revealed to the general public. It is found to attempt to secure devices from other more malicious malware.
2016
January: A trojan named "MEMZ" is created. The creator, Leurak, explained that the trojan was intended merely as a joke. The trojan alerts the user to the fact that it is a trojan and warns them that if they proceed, the computer may no longer be usable. It contains complex payloads that corrupt the system, displaying artifacts on the screen as it runs. Once run, the application cannot be closed without causing further damage to the computer, which will stop functioning properly regardless. When the computer is restarted, in place of the bootsplash is a message that reads "Your computer has been trashed by the MEMZ Trojan. Now enjoy the Nyan cat…", which follows with an animation of the Nyan Cat.
February: Ransomware Locky with its over 60 derivatives spread throughout Europe and infected several million computers. At the height of the spread over five thousand computers per hour were infected in Germany alone.
Although ransomware was not a new thing at the time, insufficient cyber security as well as a lack of standards in IT was responsible for the high number of infections.[Unfortunately, even up to date antivirus and internet security software was unable to protect systems from early versions of Locky.
February: Tiny Banker Trojan (Tinba) makes headlines. Since its discovery, it has been found to have infected more than two dozen major banking institutions in the United States, including TD Bank, Chase, HSBC, Wells Fargo, PNC and Bank of America. Tiny Banker Trojan uses HTTP injection to force the user's computer to believe that it is on the bank's website. This spoof page will look and function just as the real one. The user then enters their information to log on, at which point Tinba can launch the bank webpage's "incorrect login information" return, and redirect the user to the real website. This is to trick the user into thinking they had entered the wrong information and proceed as normal, although now Tinba has captured the credentials and sent them to its host.
September: Mirai creates headlines by launching some of the most powerful and disruptive DDoS attacks seen to date by infecting the Internet of Things. Mirai ends up being used in the DDoS attack on 20 September 2016 on the Krebs Security site which reached 620 Gbit/s.
THE END
NOTE: This is only some of the Viruses. There are too many to list. This is the original webpage i got them from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_viruses_and_worms
