PandaLabs has issued a ranking of the most insidious malware threats that have surfaced in the past 20 years. Threats have been selected for the notoriety they achieved through widespread epidemic and the damage caused. Some of the “stars” from the list include Melissa from 1999, ILoveYou from 2000 and Nimda from 2001.
… but no so-called IT professional writer dares to say? That they run on Microsoft’s platforms.
1) This list was clearly not written by a professional writer.
2) Don’t you remember the amiga and macintosh viruses from back in the day? Not to mention MS-DOS (PC-DOS and DR-DOS too!) infections.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on insecurity!
Well in order for a virus to be successful and attack a lot of computers it needs to be on a platform that is most common. A Linux virus or even a Mac Virus would have limited impact. Most Mac and Linux viruses are proof of concept viruses. Why because they don’t have the ability to spread. I am sure there are Microsoft Fan Boys who would love to make a virus and wipe the Smug smiles off the Linux and Mac users. However getting the virus to spread further then a couple of systems. (Where if they were infected they may not know, as they would just assumed OS Failure, and reformatted and reinstalled their OS) And didn’t spread to people who would analysis the problem.
a malware that destroyed mac os x would be first page news in the world
Cascade did not appear in 1997. It was around in the early 1990s, as I remember from my early teens, people having that virus on their computer. Are they sure they don’t mean 1987? It was an old DOS virus.
You are absolutely right. I remember casade-like virii from at least 1995.
But at any rate, this list is bogus. Where is the internet worm? Michaelangelo?
Yep, you’re right.
Some other glaring things.
Jerusalem was not created in 1988, it was detected in 1987 so obviously it was created before it was detected. It didn’t activate until 1988 though.
Barrott:
Uh, that’s one of the most dangerous threats in the last 20 years? Seriously? I guess it’s because it was created in Spain and Panda is a spanish company.
Where’s Morris Worm? SCA? ByteBandit? Stoned? Christmastree exec? Code Red? Form? etc etc.
Doesn’t give you much faith in PandaLabs as an AV and security outfit, does it?
Fully agree!
And they forgot One Half, Back USSR. They were kind of top art of viruses for DOS.
The only thing I can remember is “echo Looking for Sibylle…” in AUTOEXEC.BAT from old (MS-)DOS times. It was the time when F-PROT was a common tool on everyone’s PC.
I can’t share other virus names and stories because I never used platforms that had viruses / virii and trojans as features, and I didn’t pay much attention to other peoples’ infection stories. 🙂
Also forgot AnnaKornekova, though to be honest that was just effectively ILoveYou 2.0. Blaster32 I remember greatly, I was working in PCWorld (UK) at the time and there was enough people coming in with the same issue. Though I remember it being earlier, like July; the August date given could be reflective of just how slow Symantec was in responding to the threat. The whole issue was dealt with very poorly by Symantec and Microsoft.
Wow, now I can remember PeCIH virus destroying all of my Windows system executables and disk MBR … that was a real pain in the ass! I can’t think of any other virus that would be so vicious and infective. It lasted disk format, so yeah – that was definitely one of the worst crap that ever invaded my machines. That was early 1998 IIRC.
1. Linux
2. Mac OS X
3. GPL Virus
=P Just playing don’t hate!
I think GPL would be the No. 1.
How about the great hack incident in South Korea?
I’d also add vundo/virtumonde (and all of its spawn) to the list. It may not be dangerous, strictly speaking – but it’s certainly one of the nastier pieces of malware out there, at least in terms of how difficult it can be to remove it.
one virus my grandfather and i dealt with in our systems and friends systems was the good little bugger known as NYB. gotta love those old boot sector viri. a quick fdisk /mbr would nuke that bizitch. ah the days…
i wonder if we can officially call smitfraud virus popular based on its infection rate. most clients i see with viri have smitfraud or a variant of it.
we used to have a saying, “dont be sloppy with your floppy”
dr. D
Edited 2009-09-12 21:14 UTC