A complete look at viruses. From their humble beginnings, to the threats they pose on us in today's world.

2. Computer Viruses are a self-replicating malware programs
designed to spread from computer to computer. Computer
viruses have a long and colorful history, both on the PC and
Apple side of the equation. Computer viruses are as old as
electronic computers themselves but started to upgrade with
the appearance of the Internet. Take an interesting step back
through time to look at the history of some of the most
famous viruses and malware ever

3. 1945- BUG
Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper discovers a moth trapped
between relays in a Navy computer and calls it a "bug," a term
used since the late 19th century to refer to problems with
electrical devices. Murray Hopper also coined the term
"debugging" to describe efforts to fix computer problems.

4. 1949 - 1966 – SELF-
REPRODUCING AUTOMATA
Self-replicating programs were established in 1949, to produce a large number of
viruses, John von Neumann, whose known to be the “Father of Cybernetics”, wrote an
article on the “Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata” that was published in 1966. He
devised the theory of self replicating programs, providing the theoretical foundation for
computers that hold information in their "memory."

5. 1959 – CORE WARS
A computer game was programmed in Bell Laboratory by Victor
Vysottsky, H. Douglas McIlroy and Robert P Morris, named it
Core Wars, in which infectious programs named organisms
competed with the processing time of PC.

6. 1971 – THE CREEPER
Bob Thomas developed an experimental self-replicating
program, which accessed through ARPANET and copied to a
remote host system. A message displayed that “I’m the creeper,
catch me if you can!”

7. 1974 – WABBIT (RABBIT)
This infectious program was developed to make multiple
copies of itself on a computer clogging the system reducing
the performance of the computer.

8. 1974 – 1975 – ANIMAL
John Walker developed a program called ANIMAL for
the UNIVAC 1108, a non-malicious Trojan that spread
through shared tapes.

9. 1979- WORM
Engineers at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center discover the computer
worm, a rudimentary program which is the ancestor of modern computer
worms and is designed to search for idle processors in a network.

10. 1981- ELK CLONER
A program called the “Elk Cloner” was developed by Richard
Skrenta to infect Apple DOS 3.3. These programs started to
spread through files and folders that are transferred to other
computers by floppy disk.

11. 1983 –VIRUS
The term “Virus” was coined by Frederick Cohen for the
computer programs that are infectious as it has the
tendency to replicate.

12. 1986 – BRAIN BOOT SECTOR
Two Pakistani programmers Basit Farooq Alvi, and his
brother, Amjad Farooq Alvi release the first PC virus called
“Brain boot sector”

13. 1987- LEHIGH, CASCADE,
JERUSALEM VIRUS
Lehigh virus was programmed to infect command.com files from Yale
University. Cascade was a self-encrypted file virus, an outcome of
IBM’s own antivirus product. Jerusalem Virus was first detected in the
city of Jerusalem, developed to destroy all files in infected computers on
the thirteenth day that falls on a Friday.

14. 1988 – THE MORRIS WORM
This type of worm was created by Robert Tappan Morris to infect
DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX through the
Internet. It infected almost 6,000 computers on the network and
flooded them with copies of itself.

15. 1990 –CHAMELEON
Symantec launched one of the first antivirus programs called the
Norton Antivirus, to fight against the infectious viruses. The first
family of polymorphic virus called the Chameleon was
developed by Ralf Burger.

16. 1995 – CONCEPT
This virus name Concept was created to
spread and attack Microsoft Word documents.

17. 1996 – LAROUX, BAZA, STAOG
A macro virus known as Laroux was developed to infect
Microsoft Excel Documents, A virus named Baza was developed
to infect Windows 95 and Virus named Staog was created to
infect Linux.

18. 1998 – CIH VIRUS
The release of the first version of CIH viruses were developed by Chen
Ing Hau from Taiwan. In 1998, more than 500 military and government
computer systems were also hijacked by two California teenagers, who
demonstrated what a coordinated attack could do, especially combined
with a physical attack.

19. 1999 – HAPPY99, MELISSA
This type of worm was developed to attach itself to emails with a message Happy New
Year. Outlook Express and Internet Explorer on Windows 95 and 98 were affected.
In 1999 also came the “Melissa” virus, which managed to infect thousands of
computers at an alarming speed, causing over $80 million in damages.

20. 2000 – ILOVEYOU
The virus was capable of deleting files in JPEGs, MP2, or MP3
formats. It managed to infect millions of computers in just under
a day. The virus sent usernames and passwords it found on the
infected computer back to the author.

21. 2001 – ANNA KOURNIKOVA,
CODE RED, NIMDA
This virus was spread by emails to the contacts in the compromised address book of Microsoft
Outlook. The emails purported to contain pictures of the very attractive female tennis player, but in
fact hid a malicious virus.
In 2001, the Code Red virus posed a serious threat to the White House website. It infected tens of
thousands of computers, causing damages in excess of $2 billion.
The same year, the Nimda virus also hit the Internet. In the brief history of computer viruses this was
one of the most sophisticated viruses ever to appear.

22. 2002 – LFM-926
This virus was developed to infect Shockware
Flash files.

23. 2003- SLAMMER
This computer virus infected hundreds of thousands of computers
in under three hours. This virus even delayed airline flights
worldwide and in computer virus history this was the fastest
spreading virus ever.

24. 2004 – MYDOOM
This infectious worm also called the Novang was
developed to share files and permit hackers to access
infected computers. It is known as the fastest mailer worm.

25. 2005 – SAMY XXA,
COMMWARRIOR-A
This type of virus was developed to spread faster and infect the
Windows family. March saw the world's first cell phone virus:
Commwarrior-A, which originated in Russia, and spread via text
message.

26. 2006 – OSX/LEAP-A, NYXEM
Leap-A was the first ever known malware discovered against Mac OS X.
Nyxem was created to spread by mass-mailing, destroying Microsoft Office files.

27. 2007 – STORM WORM, ZEUS
Storm Worm was a fast spreading email spamming threat against
Microsoft systems that compromised millions of systems.
Zeus was a type of Trojan that infects used capture login
credentials from banking web sites and commits financial fraud.

28. 2008 – KOOBFACE, CONFICKER
Koobface was developed and created to target Facebook and MySpace users.
First discovered in November, the Conficker virus is thought to be the largest computer
worm, which infected somewhere between nine and 15 million server systems
worldwide, including servers in the French Navy, the UK Ministry of Defense, the
Norwegian Police, and other large government organizations.

29. 2010 – STUXNET
Discovered in June, Stuxnet was a computer worm targeting Siemens
industrial software through Microsoft Windows. It was the first worm
that corrupted industrial equipment. Stuxnet was also the first worm to
include a PCL (programmable logic controller), software designed to
hide its existence and progress.

30. 2011 – GAME OVER ZEUS
In June, the U.S. Justice Department announced that an international, cooperative effort
dubbed Operation Tovar succeeded in gaining control of the GameOver Zeus (GOZ)
botnet (a linked network of compromised computers), which had emerged in 2011. Up
to 1 million Microsoft Windows computers were infected and the malware was mostly
used to access banking credentials in order to illegally withdraw funds. The GOZ
malware was also used in the first example of "ransomware":

31. 2012 – FLAME
Flame, a complex malware that attacked computers using Microsoft
Windows, was discovered. Flame was capable of recording Skype
conversations, audio, keyboard activity, network traffic and screenshots.
It spread over a local network or USB stick. Flame also had a kill
command, wiping out all traces of it from the computer.

32. 2013- CRYPTOLOCKER
Cryptolocker, was discovered in 2013, which encrypts personal files and
then demands payment in exchange for a key, or secret code, to unlock
the files. According to the FBI, there were more than 121,000 victims in
the United States and 234,000 victims worldwide, paying approximately
$30 million in ransom between Sept. and Dec. 2013.

33. 2014 – BACKOFF
Malware designed to compromise Point-of-Sale (POS) systems
to steal credit card data.
Sad to say, the history will continue. That makes keeping up with
the latest antivirus and firewall technology ever so important.

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