Computer viruses are tormenting and the same virus might affect different computers differently. Some viruses completely turn the computer into unusable equipment even after several antivirus software have been run. Whereas some others do not cause much trouble and a virus removal software might be of help. The amount of loss a computer virus can cause will blow your mind. Given below are the three worst viruses that attacked the computer world and affected a very huge number of them.
3 Famous And Harmful Computer Viruses
ILOVEYOU
This virus is not as sweet as its name suggests. It was responsible for costing over $10 billion loss in the corporate world. Hence, it is considered the most malicious computer virus of all. It successfully infected 10 percent of the entire number of computers in the world. The situation was so severe that several organizations started using offline services for official communication.
The virus was developed by two Filipino programmers. The program was sent to email IDs as love confessions which once downloaded would automatically be sent to everyone on the user’s mailing list. The virus was in the TXT format and could not be traced back to where it was stored in the system.
Due to the absence of E-Commerce law, the two developers were not charged.
Code Red
This virus was given the name Code Red because it was discovered by two eEye Digital Security employees who were drinking a Code Red Mountain Dew at the time. The worm was developed for computers with the Microsoft IIS web server installed and created buffering problems on the computer. It was difficult to detect since it worked completely on memory. Once it enters the system, thousands of copies of itself are made and it gradually eats up the systems resources.
The other part of the attack involved blocking IP addresses like that of the White House which created panic. It is estimated to have affected around 2 million systems.
Melissa
Melissa was a computer virus developed by David L Smith in the year 1999. The virus was posted in the alt.sexusenet group as a password for pornographic sites. When downloaded, the file would send itself to 50 others from the user’s mailing list causing an increase in mail traffic and the number of spams. However, the developer was caught in a week by tracing back the origin of the file and ha to spend 20 months in jail and pay a fine of $5000 after which he helped the FBI in capturing creators of other famous viruses named like Anna Kournikova.