TOP TEN COMPUTER VIRUSES

1.      Mellisa Virus- the Melissa computer virus tempts recipients into opening a document with an e-mail message like "Here is that document you asked for, don't show it to anybody else." Once activated, the virus replicates itself and sends itself out to the top 50 people in the recipient's e-mail address book.

2.      ILOVE YOU- The ILOVEYOU virus initially traveled the Internet by e-mail, just like the Melissa virus. The subject of the e-mail said that the message was a love letter from a secret admirer. An attachment in the e-mail was what caused all the trouble. The original worm had the file name of LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs. The vbs extension pointed to the language the hacker used to create the worm.

3.      THE Klez Virus- The Klez virus marked a new direction for computer viruses setting the bar high for those that would follow. It debuted in late 2001, and variations of the virus plagued the Internet for several months. The basic Klez worm infected a victim's computer through an e-mail  message, replicated itself and then sent itself to people in the victim's address book.

4.      Code Red and Code Red II- ­The Code Red and Code Red II worms popped up in the summer of 2001. Both worms exploited an operating system vulnerability that was found in machines running Windows 2000 and Windows NT. The vulnerability was a buffer overflow problem, which means when a machine running on these operating systems receives more information than its buffers can handle; it starts to overwrite adjacent memory. 

5.      NIMDA-The Nimda worm's primary targets were Internet servers. While it could infect a home PC, its real purpose was to bring Internet traffic to a crawl. It could travel through the Internet using multiple methods, including e-mail. This helped spread the virus across multiple servers in record time.

6.      SQL Slammer/Sapphire- Many computer networks were unprepared for the attack, and as a result the virus brought down several important systems. The Bank of America's ATM service crashed, the city of Seattle suffered outages in 911 services and Continental Airlines had to cancel several flights due to Electronic ticketing and check-in errors.

7.      MY Doom- The My Doom (or Novarg) virus is another worm that can create a backdoor in the victim computer's operating system. The original My Doom virus -- there have been several variant.

8.      Sasser and Netskey- The Sasser worm attacked computers through a Microsoft Windows vulnerability. Unlike other worms, it didn't spread through e-mail. Instead, once the virus infected a computer, it looked for other vulnerable systems. It contacted those systems and instructed them to download the virus.

9.      Leap-A/Oompa-A-For the most part, that's true. Mac computers are partially protected from virus attacks because of a concept called security through obscurity. Apple has a reputation for keeping its operating system (OS) and hardware a closed system -- Apple produces both the hardware and the software.

10.  Storm Worm- The latest virus on our list is the dreaded Storm Worm. It was late 2006 when computer security experts first identified the worm. The public began to call the virus the Storm Worm because one of the e-mail messages.      

 

 

                                                                Chris Marvin Tugado

 Section B.