40th Anniversary of The Computer Virus

The computer virus are always a big headache for everyone using computer. It take our lots of money, time and efforts to make our system safe from infecting. And even we try all the way to protect our computer but still we may face them in our lovely PC's drive. And time to time the virus getting more powerful and harmful. The world’s first computer virus knows as Creeper celebrating its 40th anniversary but still we has no 100% perfect safeguard for viruses.


Reported by Help Net Security, "The last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010." The virus was 1st made for only harm the system but by year 2005 the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. There are uncounted number of viruses to details about but here few of most popular viruses picked by Net Security:


1971- Creeper: Its the first real computer virus was released in a lab by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the Internet’s predecessor. It gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself into the remote system, displaying the message, “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” he Creeper would start to print a file, but then stop, find another Tenex system, open a connection, pick itself up and transfer to the other machine. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.


1982- Elk Cloner: Its one of the first known microcomputer viruses that spread "in the wild," i.e., outside the computer system or lab in which it was written. It was written by a 15-year-old high school student Rich Skrenta for Apple II systems. It spread via floppy disks. Infected machines showed a harmless, humorous poem after every 50th boot. It wasn’t meant to actually cause harm, but Apple DOS disks without a standard image had their reserved tracks overwritten.


1999- Melissa: Also known as Mailissa, Simpsons, Kwyjibo, or Kwejeebo, is a mass-mailing macro virus found on March 26, 1999, Melissa shut down Internet mail systems that got clogged with infected e-mails propagating from the virus. Melissa was not originally designed for harm, but it overloaded servers and caused problems. Named in honor of a stripper the author met in Florida. The virus spread via infected Microsoft Word documents List.DOC and mailed itself to Outlook contacts of the contaminated users. Author David L. Smith was caught and went to jail for 20 months with a $5,000 fine.

2000- I LOVE YOU: Also known as LoveLetter, successfully attacked tens of millions of Windows computers in 2000 when it was sent as an attachment to an email message with the text "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. It infected the machine of users who opened the attachment. It then mailed itself to all of the contacts found on the infected user’s system. I LOVE YOU was cost companies around the world between $5 and $10 billion.


2005- MyTob: MyTob aka Zotob was one of first worms to combine the features of a Bot (the infamous “Zombies,” controlled by a remote Botmaster) and a mass-mailer created in 2005. MyTob was the turning point for viruses, which marked the beginning of an era of Botnets and Cybercrime. It exploited security vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems like Window 2000. The revenue generated from these botnets quickly grew into billions of dollars per year, and is still growing today.


2010- Stuxnet: Found in July 2010 and targets industrial software and equipment. According to most threat researchers today, only governments have the necessary resources to design and implement a virus of such complexity. To spread, Stuxnet exploited several critical vulnerabilities in Windows, which, until then, were unknown, including one guaranteeing its execution when inserting an infected USB key into the target system, even if a systems autorun capabilities were disabled. From the infected system, Stuxnet was then able to spread into an internal network, until it reached its target: a management system of an industrial process edited by Siemens. The first virus to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit, target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran. Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60% of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran. Siemens stated on November 29 that the worm has not caused any damage to its customers, but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured clandestinely, has been damaged by Stuxnet. Not its sounds like to starts of cyber-war. 


Surely the next major target for virus maker and cybercriminals could be smartphones. Smartphones today going high and even trying to replace the PC, and even turning to a new payment system. All this make smartphones to easy money-generating next targets. And same time smartphone also be a smart tools for those virus makers. 
What you think?

Plz Do not Hesitate to Comments on Article. You can share if you know more about it