Slashdot Mirror
Looking Back At the Other Kind of Virus
Slatterz writes "All this panic over a strain of flu got these people thinking about some of the more virulent computer pandemics that have hit in recent years. While a computer virus pales in seriousness to a human outbreak, malware attacks can still take a huge toll on businesses throughout the world. This list of the top ten worst viruses includes some interesting trivia, including ARPANET's Creeper virus in 1971, how early attempts at copy protection resulted in Brain, and MyDoom's denial of service attack on SCO."
this talk about virii reminds me of a a mail I got once...
this is the manual virus, based on the code of honour.
for every of your disk drive
for every folder
delete contents
type the following, in capitals: you've been owned :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Is the old floppy-to-floppy style of virus nearing extinction, or will poisoned bittorrent files breathe new life into this kind of chicanery?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Slashdotted, get the Coral cached version: http://www.pcauthority.com.au.nyud.net/News/143993,top-ten-worst-viruses.aspx
At last, an article from a major outlet that doesn't break up into ten seperate pages, one for each item, all in hopes of getting more page/ad views. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
after #3. MyDoom, there's no jump, no next page, just the copy right notice, am i missing something?
Anywho, these viruses remind me of a kinder, gentler time when lemonade was real and the danger wasn't, when we had to boot our machines up hill, both ways in the snow, and yada yada yada. Good piece of nostalgia, but I'd be interested to see #2 and #1.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Code Red wreaked havoc on the routers at the place I was working for back in 2001. That was the virus that caused ISP's to block the ports for all those peronal web servers running for no reason. Well the ISP's relised that they could cut thier traffic in half by leaving the ports blocked permanently. The virus allowed an infected machine to receive remote commands via IE cgi commands. You could check the router log to see who was infected, connect to the IP with IE and read and write to thier hard drive. The virus was named by the security team that found it, they were drinking Mountain Dew Code Red at the time.
My girlfriend told me i got herpies from using her laptop
The real worry is that a computer virus will make the leap into the human population.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
The first I heard about nimda was one of the senior engineers in our company telling me to scan my PC and let him know if anything showed up. The only thing that did was a java script trojan dropper which was relatively harmless, but by the time I'd finished everyone was sitting around waiting for the company network to be given the all clear.
Nimda seemed to show a preference for hitting file servers. Even though my machine was clear at the start, I was just checking through a shared folder and *bam*, as soon as the mouse moved across a file called readme.txt.js (The final extension was hidden, but this didn't make any difference.) a tftp connection was opened to the host, and fortunately the antivirus had been updated by that time, and so stopped it. The preview bug that caused this was a zero day.
I was on a win98 box at the time, some people on unpatched NT machines fared worse (Yeah yeah, I know patch or die.. but the company I was at didn't take endpoint security seriously, it was a wake up call to the IT department, this was the first and last worm to really own our network.) they got hit by the worm like behaviour, from directory traversal attacks with no assistance from the user needed. Nimda shut us down for days, during the first few all clears our antivirus provider was still learning all the attack vectors, so it kept coming back.
I'd like to throw a few bricks at Symantec over this, but it was a shocking learning experience for more than just them. I doubt another event like this will happen on well managed networks.. It will just be the odd trojan leaking information and joining a botnet. Or maybe some idiot connecting his personal modem behind the firewall, but I can only hope not.
In SOVIET RUSSIA the hot grits profit you!
I'm trying to think of what the word would be, but I can't come up with a word to mean "I have free pizza and the entire star trek series recorded on VHS tapes in my apartment."
I bet that there's something in klingon or lojban to embody the nerd's mating call...
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I get the strange impression that the authors aren't terribly clear on the difference between an Apple II and a modern Mac.
Viurt is nasty and fairly difficult to repair. Most malware removers recommend reinstallation rather than attempt to repair damaged system files.
There's no mention of the Blaster/Sasser worm, Sircam, CIH or Magistr. All of which caused panic and damage at least on the same scale as Conficker. All of which had much more damaging payloads than any of those noted.
Seems to be a fairly dodgy, or poorly researched list.
Well, virus is not really the proper word for most of what is infecting people anymore. It's malware, spyware, and trojans.
However, you design a destructive virus to hit public infrastructures and medical facilities and it might as serious or more than a biological virus.
It made me instantly think of this strip.
There's nothing like $HOME
In the abscense of #1 and #2 I'll nominate some:
1) Michelangelo
Back in the MS-DOS days this virus caused a scare at my workplace, on Michelangelo's birthday we were given directive to shut down our computers...my first experience with Virus hype...
2) Good Times Virus
Well ok not a virus, but I remember having to explain to my dad what a Virus hoax was for hours...ugggh...
...in bed