Timeline of computer viruses and worms
This is a list of noteworthy computer viruses and worms.
2000 and later
2006
- June 28: Invistigators stated that Essebar may have authored more than 20 other viruses including the Mydoom variant, Mydoom-BG, and the Zotob-related Mytob worm.[1]
- 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.
2005
- October 13: The Samy worm became the fastest spreading worm as of 2006.
- August 16: The Zotob worm and several variations of malware exploiting the vulnerability described in MS05-039 are discovered. The effect was overblown because several United States media outlets were infected.
2004
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Late January: MyDoom emerges, and currently holds the record for the fastest-spreading mass mailer worm.
2003
- October 24: The Sober worm is first seen and maintains its presence until 2005 with many new variants.
The simultaneous attack of the Blaster and Sobig worms caused a massive amount of damage.
- August 19: The Sobig worm (technically the Sobig.F worm) spread rapidly via mail and network shares.
- August 18: The Welchia (Nachi) worm is discovered. The worm tries to remove the blaster worm and patch Windows.
- August 12: The Blaster worm, also known as the Lovesan worm, spread rapidly by exploiting Microsoft Windows computers vulnerable to exploits first described in MS03-026 and later in MS03-039.
- January 24: The SQL slammer worm also known as the Sapphire worm, attacked vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE described in MS02-039 and MS02-061, causes widespread problems on the Internet.
2001
- October 26: The Klez worm is first identified.
- September 18: The Nimda worm is discovered and spreads through a variety of means including vulnerabilities described in MS01-044 and backdoors left by Code Red II and Sadmind worm.
- August 4: A complete re-write of the Code Red worm, Code Red II begins aggresively spreading, primarily in China.
- July 13: The Code Red worm attacking the Index Server ISAPI Extension in Microsoft's Internet Information Services with a vulnerability described in MS01-033, is released.
- July: The Sircam worm is released, spreading through e-mails and unprotected network shares.
- May 8: The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Microsystem's Solaris (Security Bulletin 00191)and Microsoft's Internet Information Services (MS00-078).
- January: A worm strikingly similar to the Morris worm, named the Ramen worm infected only Red Hat Linux machines running version 6.2 and 7, using three vulnerabilities in wu-ftpd, rpc-statd and lpd respectively.
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.
1990-1999
1999
- March 26: The Melissa worm is released, targeting Microsoft Word and Outlook-based systems, and creating considerable network traffic.
1998
1995
- The "Concept virus" the first Macro virus is created
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.
1980-1989
1989
- October 1989: Ghostball, the first multipartite virus, is discovered by Fridrik Skulason
1988
- November 2: The Morris worm, created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and SUN machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet, and becomes the first worm to spread extensively "in the wild", and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities. The Ping-Pong virus is discovered and grows out to become the most common and well-known boot sector virus of its time.
1987
- 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.
- October: The Jerusalem virus is found in the city of Jerusalem, Israel. It is a destructive virus programmed to destroy executable files on every occurrence of Friday the 13th.
1986
- January: The Brain boot sector virus launches, considered the first PC virus.
1982
- A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems, is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild"—that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created.
See also
External links
- Virus timeline, by IBM Research
- McAfee Virus Information Library