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Top Viruses, Worms and Malware in 2006

Posted by Zonk on from the and-the-losers-are dept.

An anonymous reader writes "HNS is running an article with a list of those malicious codes which, although they may not have caused serious epidemics, stood out in one way or another. Some of the categories are: the biggest snooper, the most moralistic, the worst job applicant and the most tenacious. From the article: 'The most competitive. Once the Popuper spyware has installed itself on a computer, it runs a pirate version of a well-known antivirus application. Far from trying to do the user a favour, it is actually trying to eliminate any possible rival from the computer. It seems that the fight for supremacy has also reached the world of Internet threats.'"

9 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. The worst worm and job applicant - Todd Shriber? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Or will we have to wait for next years list to see our new friend Toddy included? :-)

  2. Great year for malware... by spywhere · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cleansing home PCs, I've seen some of the more exotic exploits become commonplace, including:

    Direct Revenue hiding its core .DLL as a print monitor;
    one lone .DLL, registered in a CLSID key, warning of SPYWARE!!! from the system tray;
    launching executables from Group Policy subkeys;
    populating subkeys of Winolgon\Notify with self-renaming .DLL's.

    Hiding malware so it launches before Explorer (and even before the antivirus app) is sneaky, underhanded, and ensures a steady stream of income so I don't need to get an actual job. Editing the Registry hives from WinPE is the only cost-effective way to remove many of these things, and Suzy Homeuser wull never be ready for that.
    So here's to you, scumbag malware writers... and here's to Microsoft for leaving soooo many ways to launch your malware: Thanks for paying my mortgage. Without security holes, and the slimeballs who exploit them, I'd be back selling auto parts.

  3. Archaic! by Warbringer87 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Whoever created the DarkFloppy.A worm appears not to have heard of e-mail, instant messaging or P2P systems, as the propagation methods they've chosen to spread this malicious code is... floppy disks. Not much chance of a massive epidemic then, is there?
    Oh, well, I think they underestimate just how stupid some people are. I wonder who the unlucky person was who first nabbed that one. Just goes to show, the internet is the "wild frontier" and that probably won't ever change.
    1. Re:Archaic! by spywhere · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ten years ago, I pioneered a foolproof way to clean floppy disks.
      I worked at a chain of auto parts stores, with only five Windows machines. The marketing guy was constantly catching the Zombie virus from his drawer full of floppies.
      After about the 5th or 6th time, I took all the floppy disks out of his desk and smashed them with a ballpeen hammer.

    2. Re:Archaic! by flappinbooger · · Score: 2, Funny

      Simon Travaglia, is that you?

      --
      Flappinbooger isn't my real name
  4. Re:Good News! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
    Me too!!
    • Operating systems with the most uselessly pretty user interfaces.
    • Software products most likely to kick their owner in the nuts after taking his money.
    • Software products with a frightening history of insecurity and horrifyingly bureaucratic development.


    • That's all I got so far.
  5. What the world needs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The time is ripe for a beneficial virus, one that does no harm to the host computer, but acts as a keylogger that will play a very loud annoying buzing noise and kill all open apps if the user types: "misa campo", "made of win", "internets", "begs the question", or any other word or phrase from a list of current phrases used by morons.

  6. Re:WGA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yeah, damn Microsoft for trying to ensure that people use legal copies of XP.

  7. Classic Help Desk story... by spywhere · · Score: 2, Funny

    "I just use my Dell."

    When I was the alpha geek on a four-geek Help Desk, we had to ask each caller for the computer name (we later used bginfo for that). We would ring a bell every time we got the answer "Dell," then patiently explain that the computer is a Dell, but the computer has a name on the network, and we need to figure out what that is...
    one woman interrupted me: "Trinitron?"

    I slapped the mute switch just in time, and ROTFLMAO.