Timeline of notable computer viruses and worms

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of noteworthy computer viruses and worms.

Contents

[edit] 1970-1979

[edit] Early 1970s

  • Creeper virus was detected on ARPANET infecting the Tenex operating system. Creeper gained access independently through a modem and copied itself to the remote system where the message, 'I'M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.' was displayed. The Reaper program, itself a virus, was created to delete Creeper, the creators of both programs are unknown.

[edit] 1974

  • Rabbit virus appears infecting other machines via multiplication. Named for the speed at which it clogged the system with copies of itself, reducing system performance, before reaching a threshold and crashing.

[edit] 1975

  • Pervading Animal, a game written for the UNIVAC 1108, appeared. It remains a matter of debate whether Pervading Animal represented the first Trojan or an innocent game with unintended bugs.

[edit] 1980-1989

[edit] 1980

[edit] 1981

  • A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems. Apple II was seen as particularly vulnerable due the storage of its operating system on Floppy disk. Elk Cloner's design combined with public ignorance about what malware was and how to protect against it led to Elk Cloner being responsible for the first large-scale computer virus outbreak in history.

[edit] 1983

  • The term 'virus' is coined by Len Eidelmen in describing self-replicating computer programs. In 1984 Eidelmen would originate the phrase "computer virus" and describe the operation of such programs in terms of "infection".
  • November 10th, 1983, at Lehigh Unversity, Eidelmen demonstrates a virus-like program on a VAX11/750 system. The program was able to install itself to, or infect, other system objects.

[edit] 1986

  • January: The Brain boot sector virus (aka Pakistani flu) is released to the wild. Brain is considered the first IBM PC compatible virus, and the program responsible for the first IBM PC compatible virus epidemic. The virus is also known as Lahore, Pakistani, Pakistani Brain, as it was created in Lahore, Pakistan by 19 year old Pakistani programmer, Basit Farooq Alvi and his brother Amjad Farooq Alvi.
  • December 1986: Ralf Burger, presented the Virdem model of programs at a meeting of the underground Chaos Computer Club in Germany. The Virdem model represented the first programs that could replicate themselves via addition of their code to executable DOS files in COM format.

[edit] 1987

  • Appearance of the Vienna virus, which was subsequently neutralized- the first time this had happened on the IBM platform.[1]
  • Appearance of Lehigh virus, boot sector viruses such as Yale from USA, Stoned from New Zealand, Ping Pong from Italy, and appearance of first self-encrypting file virus, Cascade. Lehigh was never released to the wild however. A subsequent infection of Cascade in the offices of IBM Belgium led to IBM responding with its own antivirus product development. Prior to this, antivirus solutions developed at IBM were intended for staff use only.
  • October: The Jerusalem virus, part of the (at that time unknown) Suriv family, is detected in the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem destroys all executable files on infected machines upon every occurrence of Friday the 13th (except Friday the 13th Nov 1987 making its first trigger date May 13th 1988). Jerusalem caused a worldwide epidemic in 1988.
  • November: The SCA virus, a boot sector virus for Amigas appears, immediately creating a pandemic virus-writer storm. A short time later, SCA releases another, considerably more destructive virus, the Byte Bandit.

[edit] 1988

[edit] 1989

[edit] 1990-1999

[edit] 1990

  • Mark Washburn working on an analysis of the Vienna and Cascade viruses with Ralf Burger develops the first family of polymorphic virus: the Chameleon family. Chameleon series debuted with the release of 1260.

[edit] 1992

  • Michelangelo predicted to create a digital apocalypse on 6 March, with millions of computers having their information wiped, according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus. Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal.

[edit] 1995

  • The "Concept virus" the first Macro virus is created

[edit] 1998

[edit] 1999

[edit] 2000 and later

[edit] 2000

  • May: The VBS/Loveletter worm, also known as the "I love you" virus appeared. As of 2004, this was the most costly virus to business, causing upwards of 10 billion dollars in damage.
  • Zmist - Z0mbie's fully metamorphic, code integrating virus.

[edit] 2001

[edit] 2003

The simultaneous attack of the Blaster and Sobig worms caused a massive amount of damage.

[edit] 2004

  • Late January: MyDoom emerges, and currently holds the record for the fastest-spreading mass mailer worm.
  • March 19: The Witty worm is a record-breaking worm in many regards. It exploited holes in several Internet Security Systems (ISS) products. It was the fastest disclosure to worm, it was the first internet worm to carry a destructive payload and it spread rapidly using a pre-populated list of ground-zero hosts.
  • May 1: The Sasser worm emerges by exploiting a vulnerability in LSASS described in MS04-011 and causes problems in networks, even interrupting business in some cases.
  • December: Santy, the first known "webworm" is launched. It exploited a vulnerability in phpBB described in BID10701 and used Google in order to find new targets. It infected around 40000 sites before Google filtered the search query used by the worm, preventing it from spreading.

[edit] 2005

[edit] 2006

  • January 20: The Nyxem worm was discovered. It spread by mass-mailing. Its payload, which activates on the third of every month, starting on February 3, attempts to disable security-related and file sharing software, and destroy files of certain types, such as Microsoft Office files.
  • February 16: discovery of the first-ever virus for Mac OS X, a low-threat worm known as OSX/Leap-A or OSX/Oompa-A, is announced.[1]
  • Mid-June: Precursor to the "w0rm.EricAndrew" worm is released on the popular website MySpace. The worm is spread through visiting profiles and copying itself through a Quicktime security hole into the "Music" section on the victims profile. The worm, known as the "lOrdOfthenOOse" worm, changed display names to "lOrdOfthenOOse", and not allowing the name to be changed. The worm was defeated 2 ways. The primary way was through removing the code from the profile. The way it was eradicated, however, was through the removal of the link by the webmaster of the website the virus was uploaded to. Eradicated 4 days after release. No damage was caused, but it was estimated that 70% of all Myspace, or over 70 million profiles, were infected with the worm[citation needed]. A patch was released from Quicktime specifically for Myspace users to prevent a worm being spread in this manner again.
  • June 28: Investigators stated that Essebar may have authored more than 20 other viruses including the Mydoom variant, Mydoom-BG, and the Zotob-related Mytob worm.[2]

[edit] 2007

  • January 7: A worm generated by hackers of the popular website MySpace was discovered by many users on the site. Some sites were unaffected while others showed display names of w0rm.EricAndrew. The hackers, Eric and Andrew changed wordings and added to others' sites.
  • January 17 : Peacomm Trojan identified as a fast spreading email spamming threat thought to have originated from Russia, it disguises itself as a news email containing a film about bogus news stories asking you to download the attachment which it claims is a film.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Kaspersky Lab viruslist
  2. ^ (pcwelt.de) - "Zotob author may be virus mastermind"

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/i/m/Timeline_of_notable_computer_viruses_and_worms.html"
In other languages