In the passed few years, there has been computer viruses that took great effect on global economic growth. However, there are these viruses that have cause millions, worse, billions of dollars loss. Here are the top 10 most destructive computer viruses of all time according to techweb:
1. CIH (1998)
Estimated Damage: 20 to 80 million dollars worldwide, countless amounts of PC data destroyed
Unleashed from Taiwan in June of 1998
2. Melissa (1999)
Estimated Damage: 300 to 600 million dollars
3. ILOVEYOU (2000)
Estimated Damage: 10 to 15 billion dollars
4. Code Red (2001)
Estimated Damage: 2 billion and 600 million dollars (2.6B $)
5. SQL Slammer (2003
Estimated Damage: Because SQL Slammer erupted on a Saturday, the damage was low in dollars and cents. However, it hit 500,000 servers world wide and actually shut down South Korea’s online capacity for 12 hours.
6. Blaster (2003)
Estimated Damage: 2 to 10 billion dollars, hundreds of thousands of infected PCs
7. Sobig.F (2003)
Estimated Damage: 5 to 10 billion dollars, over 1 million PCs infected
8. Bagle (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars…and counting
9. MyDoom (2004)
Estimated Damage: At its peak, slowed global Internet performance by 10 percent and Web load times by up to 50 percent
10. Sasser (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars
The effect of computer virus is really serious because it can harm not only computers, same is true with the life of others.
The famed micro-blogging site was again targeted by an attack that re-directed users to sites that took the usual form of malware laden sites, telling users to install software that in fact did nothing but loaded their system with exploits that is reserved for later by hackers. The detected problems had computer systems made ready for drive-by attacks that would get hold of their user data and log in’s for the many other social sites or those they find saved on the computer’s memory for their use in identity attacks. Much more dangerous that the previous attack which was more the result of a bored teen who wanted to become famous, responsible for the Mikey attack that victimized and spread much like malware, using the saved names in the database sending out copies of itself as it goes out to propagate. That time, there was a mere nuisance message that kept popping up everywhere but this time round, security analysts have found links to organized criminal groups that have been poised to take advantage of the security flaws should it have not been detected. (more…)
Symantec has long been recognized as one of the security software industry’s biggest players yet even these blokes are prone to make errors. Some while back as their developers were out to test some features of their virus scanners and other security software, they unknowingly released a test file without attaching a valid and proper security certificate, and what do you know, they tried to make it disappear. As it turns out, the file was supposed to be a valid test program and in fact it was, yet the lack of the security signature had it recognized as such and as an attempt to infiltrate the computer systems of their clients. On the client side, their firewalls set out and performed what they were designed to do, and that was to block the attempt to allow entry to their protected systems. System administrators and personal users alike got so worried that they flooded the support site for information due to fear of a large-scale hacking attack that may be trying to get into their system. (more…)
Continued from the previous post…………
There is also a facility that allows people to report attack sites that have either been pre-loaded with malware or exploits that can later be used for hacking attacks for whatsoever reason. The way Google searches also tends to expose the power of their bots that also gather data on the overall site statistics and other facts about a particular page where it finds the said information thus becoming a sort of data store for hackers to use. These hackers somehow managed to circumvent security measures in place, intercepting the data the bots gather and stores them in some remote area or hidden site on the web where hackers check regularly for the easiest sites to get into. (more…)
In security that is and the stuff of fiction has become reality when hackers developed a bit that uses it’s immense search capabilities to do their dirty work for them. Everybody knows that when it comes to searching for information on the internet, nobody can come close to Google’s never ending banks of data center servers and storage racks. (more…)
Image Source: img218.imageshack.us
Recently, a virus definition update for the widely used anti virus program AVG has wrongfully tagged a Windows file called user32.dll as a malware and considered it as a threat and recommended it to be removed. This is just one of the many flaws that really prove anti virus softwares that exist are not perfect in dealing with its purpose. WHY? For the benefit of the readers who have not a clue in Windows registry system, user32.dll is a vital function of the Windows operating system. You DELETE it, you will have no chance of booting up your PC again. Luckily for Windows Vista, the Problematic tagging is limited only to Windows XP. AVG on the other hand has updated the definition and resolved the false tagging.
Image source: www.mysafepc.net
Avast Home Edition 4.8.1229.80923 is a free antivirus, and it was released this year September 23, 2008. Even if it was just released less than a month (since the date today is Oct 8), 30,937,233 people have already downloaded this program at Download.com. Even the Editor of Download.com has given Avast Home Edition a perfect score 5/5. It just proves that Avast Home Edition is a program worthy for our attention. This program has the following workings, according to the publisher’s description: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, choose what you want to scan and just press the play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging–ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic–intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield–monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner–scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner–scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.
Technically all computers all over the globe suffer form the attacks of computer viruses, Trojans and malicious software – from home-based units, small and medium-enterprises to giant business and even government bodies. The bottom-line is that the internet is a fertile land to do crimes. It only means that a considerably large amount of money can be illegally made from creating these viruses and distributing them over the network.
The damage done by these viruses and malware can reach to billions of dollars every year. And according to some research made by Computer Economics, the lost in the world economy is close to $18 billions and is having the trend towards a growth rate of 30% to 40% annually.
According to studies done by a German computer magazine in 2007, the 17 different anti-virus programs they tested only detected only 20-30% of the malware they introduced on the computers. In 2006, a similar study yielded much better detection rates of 50-60%.
These results are not encouraging and seem to indicate that anti-virus programmers who update virus definition files are not able to keep up with hackers and malware creators. Also, the “bad guys” have easy access to the same anti-virus programs and even free online services that test suspicious files, and thus they are able to test if their creations can get through the latest anti-virus programs before they release them.
This has been the source of arguments online for a long time now, but the answer is: yes, some anti-virus programs definitely do. They have to screen every bit of data that enters your computer for potentially harmful trojans, malware, and viruses. Thus they take up CPU resources, memory, and disk activity.
According to this study, the top offender is Norton Internet Security 2006. It delays your boot up time by almost 50%! At second place is McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8, followed at third place by Norton Internet Security 2007.
So does this mean you shouldn’t install anti-virus software? Of course not. Just don’t use those specific products if you want a PC that boots up and runs quickly.
