Top 10 Most Dangerous Computer Viruses Of All Time

Computer virus truly means a nightmare for every computer user. The computer virus is like cancer for computers which slowly kills our computer. In this list, we have mentioned 20 most destructive computer viruses.

Top 10 Most-Destructive Computer Viruses Ever 

The word “Computer Virus” really scares all computer users. As we all know, Viruses can cause a lot of damage to the computer. It can hurt victims privacy, can access private files and can even corrupt the precious data which includes photos, videos, saved passwords, etc. Computer viruses have already caused many financial losses for many companies. Sometimes it is good to look at the past and take a look at the viruses that caused widespread destruction that can make you conscious of computer viruses. Following are the 15 most destructive computer viruses of all time.

 #1 ILOVEYOU

ILOVEYOU

It is the computer worm that attacked more than ten millions of Windows personal computers. The virus started to spread as an email message which includes a subject line “ILOVEYOU” and has the attachment of “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs.” Once clicked, it had the capabilities of forwarding itself to everybody in the victim’s address book and proceed to overwrite files by itself which makes the computer unbootable. This virus was created by two Filipino Programmers, Reonel Ramones, and Onel de Guzman. Yankee Doodle.

 #2 Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle was first discovered in the year 1989, and a Bulgarian hacker created it. It is said when Yankee Doodle was executed, the virus itself becomes the memory resident. Yankee Doodle infects all .com and .exe files. The virus would play a tune “Yankee Doodle” itself every day at 4 PM if it was in memory.

 #3 Nimda

Nimda

Nimda was first found on September 18, 2001. The name of the virus is derived from the word “Admin” if spelled backward. Nimda used Emails, server vulnerabilities, shared folders and file transfer to spread itself. It became the internet’s most widespread virus within 22 minutes. The primary purpose of the virus was to slow down the internet traffic considerable causing a DoS attack.

#4 Morris Worm

Morris Worm

In the year 1988 Robert Tappan Morris, the graduate student of Cornell University released the virus which affected approximately 10% of all the computers that were being connected to the internet. At that time 60,000 computers were attached to the internet, and the worm infected 10% of them. The virus had the capability to slow down the computer up to the least point at which it becomes unusable.

#5 Conficker

Conficker

Conficker which is also known as Downup, Downadup, and Kido is a type of computer virus that usually targets Microsoft Windows Operating system. The virus was first identified in November 2008. This virus uses flaws of Windows operating system to fetch the administrator password via dictionary attacks while forming a botnet. This virus infected millions of computers which include government, business and home computer in over 190 countries.

#6 Storm Worm

Storm Worm

The Storm Worm is a backdoor trojan horse that was identified in late 2006. Storm worm came in the spotlight when users started receiving e-mails with a subject line about a recent weather disaster “230 dead as storm batters Europe”. The Storm Worm virus easily tricks the victims to click on the fake links that were already infected by the virus turning any Windows computer into a botnet. As of January 22, 2007, the Storm Worm accounted for 8% of all malware infections globally.

#7 SkyNet

SKYNET

We all know about the Terminator, Skynet is a virus that was inspired by The Terminator movie. It is a very kind virus which makes the victims PC slow very kindly as well as it turns the computer screen red and states “Don’t be afraid. I am a very kind virus. You have done many works today. So, I will let your computer slow down. Have a nice day, Goodbye. Press a key to continue”. This virus infects all .exe files on the computer.

#8 Zeus

Zeus

This is a type of Trojan horse malware that spreads mainly through drive-by downloads and phishing schemes. It was first recognized in July 2007 when it was mainly used to steal information from the United States Department of Transportation. Zeus virus is very tough to detect because it uses some special stealth techniques that make difficult for an updated antivirus to detect it. Due to its special stealth technologies, this malware has become the largest botnet on the Internet.

#9 Mydoom

MyDoom

On 1st February 2004, approximately one million computers were infected with Mydoom’s denial of service attacks, and it was the largest such attack to the date. Mydoom virus spread through email which contains the text message “andy; I’m just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry.” When the victim opens the mail the malicious code automatically downloaded and then steal the victim’s whole contacts of email. From where it spread to the victim’s friend, relatives, and colleagues.

#10 SQL Slammer

SQL-Slammer

SQL Slammer is the fast-spreading computer worm that infected most of its 75,000 victims within ten minutes. SQL Slammer dramatically slowed down general Internet traffic and brought down South Korea’s online capacity on knees for 12 hours. SQL Slammer mainly targeted on the servers by generating random IP addresses and discharging the worm to those IP addresses.