Three of the Worst Computer Viruses

When we talk about a computer virus, it usually means any type of code designed to infect
computers and spread to more computers. They are created by malicious programmers who
want to make money by attacking your computer on other targets or stealing your personal
information. They may also be trying to see how far their virus is spreading. Different viruses
affect Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, and even run data servers and the Internet, which
keep companies. Antivirus programs can help, but they also have trouble dealing with threats
they have never seen before. Over the years, thousands and thousands of viruses have spread
online and they have caused billions of dollars in lost productivity, wasted resources and broken
machines. A few dozen of those viruses stand out some spreading particularly quickly or
infecting many or causing tons of damage. Some have done all of the above. Because most
viruses are so bad, it is difficult to choose the ones that are, in many ways, objectively the
worst.

But with that in mind, here are three of those additional destructive viruses. These are snippets
of code that have changed the way people think about computer security, people who design
viruses, and people who try to protect them.

1. Melissa virus: you are an unsuspecting computer user who has never been infected by
a virus and is trained to look for signs that email may be harmful. A subject line comes
from someone you know is an important message to you. The message inside is "Here's
the document you asked for ... don't show anyone else" with a blinding emoticon.
Attachment is a Word document labeled “List”. So click on it because you're curious…
and a list of porn sites will appear. At this point, you realize that email is probably some
kind of virus. But too late, the first 50 people in your address book have already gotten a
copy of the same email, with a subject line saying the message is coming from you.
That's the Melissa virus. It is spread by Microsoft's lo-look email program, and although
the attachment looks like an innocent word document, it is infected with computers due
to the so-called macro. Macro is a specific type of computer program used to create
shortcuts. In Word, they are meant to make editing a document easier. Instead of
manually changing the document individually, the macro is a piece of code, which allows
you to do all of this in a single click. The problem is that the functionality gives macros
more power on your computer. So a macro virus-like Melissa uses that power using
malicious code. Within a few days, Melissa had spread to hundreds of thousands of
computers. It does no harm to computers, but it slows down email services and costs 80
million to all companies. In the end, IT professionals and antivirus programs have put in
place security measures to stop the virus, by preventing it from sending emails and
reaching other people's inboxes if they are sent. Melissa spread quickly because of
social engineering: it was designed to make people interested in opening attachment.
2. ILOVEYOU Virus: A year later, the ILOVEYOU virus, which spread in May 2000, was also
successful due to social engineering. It reached 45 million computers in just two days
and caused billions of dollars in damage. The infected email has a subject line called
"ILOVEYOU" and comes with a "love letter for you.txt" attachment for you. When you
click on the attachment, the virus passes through your system files, searching for media
such as documents, images, and audio files. Then it overwrites them with their copies,
so if you don't back up your files, you lose all your data. Meanwhile, the virus is sent to
everyone in your address book. ILOVEYOU is a type of virus called worm, which is an
independent program that cannot be used to run a host program, the way Melissa used
Microsoft Word. It's like a text document, so opening it seemed relatively harmless, but
a "love letter for you" file is a kind of file called Visual Basic Script, which uses File
Extension.vbs. Users will not see VBS at the end of the file name because the Windows
operating system they are using will hide file extensions by default. Visual Basic Scripts
will send you a list of instructions to run your computer. So if they are malicious, they
can be very dangerous and do things like deleting all your files. Like Melissa, the
ILOVEYOU worm lasts many days. It is filtered from people's inboxes and companies
have released solutions for infected machines. But there was already so much damage.
3. SQL SLAMMER: In 2003, many of the devices and connections that are still connected to
the Internet have suddenly become very slow, even by 2003 standards. So what
happened? As you are now essaying, all this confusion is caused by the virus. But it is
not a virus that spreads via email or infects many people at home. Slammer is a worm
 that targets SQL servers, which stores databases using a piece of Microsoft software…
Microsoft SQL Server. It worked by taking advantage of a bug in the software: it sent a
specially configured code to the server, which seemed like a simple request for
information, but reproduced the server to send more copies of the same worm. The
worm spreads faster than any other virus so far, infecting over 75,000 servers in just 10
minutes. Those servers send requests to thousands of other servers, which cannot
handle all the traffic. In all, millions of servers have been affected and the Internet has
been corrupted for a while. Billions of damages are expected to be done before the
slammer stops, and the programmer behind it never caught on. The total confusion can
be avoided, however, six months ago, Microsoft released a fix for a bug that Slammer
exploited, but many have not yet installed it.

If your computer or laptop is attacked by a virus, contact the nearest laptop virus removal
services and computer virus removal services.