My Top Ten Computer Viruses that Has Caused the Most Trouble,

We hear in the news or a friend talking about a new computer virus and we listen with intent as to ensure that we have taken the necessary steps to ensure our computer remains virus free. We also hear about malware, spyware and adware, and I was thinking about the differences and began to wonder, what are the differences?

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. Whereas Malware, adware and spyware do not have this ability to reproduce themselves. So in laymans terms a virus is a program that can, without help, infect other computers. Malware, spyware and adware items require someone to click on something, or go to a web site of some sort, etc. The end user must go to a site, or install software that has the spyware or malware built in etc.

I then began to wonder what the very first computer virus was. A program called "Rother J" created in 1986 in Pakistan. The virus was originally created to deter piracy of software created by Farooq Alvi brothers. Here is where it has all begun in terms of viruses and people programming viruses.

I have compiled a list of the 10 Worst computer viruses that we have seen over the last two and a half decades. I am sure that some of you will remember these viruses that the havoc that they all played in our lives. I am not placing these in any order or severity.

Sircam, made an appearance in July 2001 and was aimed at computers running Windows 95, 98 and ME. This virus was distributed via email, and once it infected your computer it would send random documents to people in your address book.

The Benjamin virus came out I May 2002 and infected the file sharing program Kazaa. This virus would share out your hard drive and then begin to fill it with music and movie files till your drive was full.

I think one of the most remembered viruses is the Nimda virus. This virus made it debut in September 2001. This vicious worm virus copied itself across network s bringing large companies to their knees trying to get ahead of this little nasty bug. The payload was to modify documents with HTML code, then send to people in your address book. It also made numerous copies of itself on your network, computers, just about everywhere. The bigger issue is that as it replicated itself around the network the amount of network resources that it absorbed starting to make many networks fail. Remember nimda back words = admin.

A prelude to the nimda virus was the Melissa virus, circa March 1999. With a payload of sending emails to the first 50 people in your address book, the flood of emails brought down networks right and left. Many companies had to turn off their email server thus hindering "business as normal" in order to get ahead of this virus repopulation.

The ILOVEYOU virus has caused the most damage of any other virus to date. This little work of art, so to speak, infected users using everything from chat sessions, emails, shared drives. The virus would send itself to other people via your address book, and this virus embedded itself in your registry files, program settings, just about everything. Thank goodness we have immunity from it now.

This particular virus plagued the internet for months. The basic form was distribution through email. From there the Klez Virus, would make other programs inoperable. This virus was unique as it would disable your Anti-virus software. The virus was then modified to begin spoofing emails. So not only would it send out an email from your address book it would make it appear that is came from someone else in your address book. Spoofing like this makes it ahrd to block emails that might or might not be infected.

Both the Red and Code Red II viruses came about in the summer of 2001. They both targeted Windows NT and Windows 2000 computers. The virus would produce a buffer overflow and then would flow up with a denial of service attack geared against the web site www.whitehouse.gov This way people were not able to get to the web site and view any information.

SQL Slammer/Sapphire virus took down banks, airline-booking systems, and even 911 call centers, causing over 1 billion dollars in damage. This virus had the ability to replicate itself very quickly as it was doubling the number of infections across other systems in a matter of minutes.

Leap-A/Oompa-A was a aimed at the MAC system. In 2006 the virus made its attack. It used iChat to replicate itself to all different Mac systems. It would then send infected files to people on your iChat list, thus infecting more and more people. Primarily this virus just showed that even the Mac could get hacked.

Finally, on our list today is the Storm Worm virus. This worm virus was first found in late 2006. As a worm, it would turn other computers into zombies and bot systems, meaning that the infected computer could then be controlled by someone else.

Today, there are still a large number of viruses being created each year that we all need to be careful to avoid. Therefore, as reminders make sure that you have good Anti-virus software installed and that the virus definitions are up-to-date.

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