Timeline of

Computer

Viruses

Computer Viruses are a self-replicating malware programs designed to spread from computer to computer. Computer viruses have a long and colorful history, both on the PC and Apple side of the equation. Computer viruses are as old as electronic computers themselves but started to upgrade with the appearance of the Internet. Take an interesting step back through time to look at the history of some of the most famous viruses and malware ever

1945- BUG Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper discovers a moth trapped between relays in a Navy computer and calls it a "bug," a term used since the late 19th century to refer to problems with electrical devices. Murray Hopper also coined the term "debugging" to describe efforts to fix computer problems.

1949 - 1966 – SELF-REPRODUCING AUTOMATASelf-replicating programs were established in 1949, to produce a large number of viruses, John von Neumann, whose known to be the “Father of Cybernetics”, wrote an article on the “Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata” that was published in 1966. He devised the theory of self replicating programs, providing the theoretical foundation for computers that hold information in their "memory."

1959 – CORE WARSA computer game was programmed in Bell Laboratory by Victor Vysottsky, H. Douglas McIlroy and Robert P Morris, named it Core Wars, in which infectious programs named organisms competed with the processing time of PC.

1971 – THE CREEPERBob Thomas developed an experimental self-replicating program, which accessed through ARPANET and copied to a remote host system. A message displayed that “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!”

1974 – WABBIT (RABBIT)This infectious program was developed to make multiple copies of itself on a computer clogging the system reducing the performance of the computer.

1974 – 1975 – ANIMALJohn Walker developed a program called ANIMAL for the UNIVAC 1108, a non-malicious Trojan that spread through shared tapes.

1979- WORMEngineers at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center discover the computer worm, a rudimentary program which is the ancestor of modern computer worms and is designed to search for idle processors in a network.

1981- ELK CLONERA program called the “Elk Cloner” was developed by Richard Skrenta to infect Apple DOS 3.3. These programs started to spread through files and folders that are transferred to other computers by floppy disk.

1983 –VIRUSThe term “Virus” was coined by Frederick Cohen for the computer programs that are infectious as it has the tendency to replicate.

1986 – BRAIN BOOT SECTORTwo Pakistani programmers Basit Farooq Alvi, and his brother, Amjad Farooq Alvi release the first PC virus called “Brain boot sector”

1987- LEHIGH, CASCADE, JERUSALEM VIRUSLehigh virus was programmed to infect command.com files from Yale University. Cascade was a self-encrypted file virus, an outcome of IBM’s own antivirus product. Jerusalem Virus was first detected in the city of Jerusalem, developed to destroy all files in infected computers on the thirteenth day that falls on a Friday.

1988 – THE MORRIS WORMThis type of worm was created by Robert Tappan Morris to infect DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX through the Internet. It infected almost 6,000 computers on the network and flooded them with copies of itself.

1990 –CHAMELEONSymantec launched one of the first antivirus programs called the Norton Antivirus, to fight against the infectious viruses. The first family of polymorphic virus called the Chameleon was developed by Ralf Burger.

1995 – CONCEPTThis virus name Concept was created to spread and attack Microsoft Word documents.

1996 – LAROUX, BAZA, STAOGA macro virus known as Laroux was developed to infect Microsoft Excel Documents, A virus named Baza was developed to infect Windows 95 and Virus named Staog was created to infect Linux.

1998 – CIH VIRUSThe release of the first version of CIH viruses were developed by Chen Ing Hau from Taiwan. In 1998, more than 500 military and government computer systems were also hijacked by two California teenagers, who demonstrated what a coordinated attack could do, especially combined with a physical attack.

1999 – HAPPY99, MELISSAThis type of worm was developed to attach itself to emails with a message Happy New Year. Outlook Express and Internet Explorer on Windows 95 and 98 were affected.

In 1999 also came the “Melissa” virus, which managed to infect thousands of computers at an alarming speed, causing over $80 million in damages.

2000 – ILOVEYOUThe virus was capable of deleting files in JPEGs, MP2, or MP3 formats. It managed to infect millions of computers in just under a day. The virus sent usernames and passwords it found on the infected computer back to the author.

2001 – ANNA KOURNIKOVA, CODE RED, NIMDAThis virus was spread by emails to the contacts in the compromised address book of Microsoft Outlook. The emails purported to contain pictures of the very attractive female tennis player, but in fact hid a malicious virus.

In 2001, the Code Red virus posed a serious threat to the White House website. It infected tens of thousands of computers, causing damages in excess of $2 billion.

The same year, the Nimda virus also hit the Internet. In the brief history of computer viruses this was one of the most sophisticated viruses ever to appear.

2002 – LFM-926This virus was developed to infect Shockware Flash files.

2003- SLAMMERThis computer virus infected hundreds of thousands of computers in under three hours. This virus even delayed airline flights worldwide and in computer virus history this was the fastest spreading virus ever.

2004 – MYDOOMThis infectious worm also called the Novang was developed to share files and permit hackers to access infected computers. It is known as the fastest mailer worm.

2005 – SAMY XXA, COMMWARRIOR-AThis type of virus was developed to spread faster and infect the Windows family. March saw the world's first cell phone virus: Commwarrior-A, which originated in Russia, and spread via text message.

2006 – OSX/LEAP-A, NYXEMLeap-A was the first ever known malware discovered against Mac OS X.

Nyxem was created to spread by mass-mailing, destroying Microsoft Office files.

2007 – STORM WORM, ZEUSStorm Worm was a fast spreading email spamming threat against Microsoft systems that compromised millions of systems.

Zeus was a type of Trojan that infects used capture login credentials from banking web sites and commits financial fraud.

2008 – KOOBFACE, CONFICKERKoobface was developed and created to target Facebook and MySpace users.

First discovered in November, the Conficker virus is thought to be the largest computer worm, which infected somewhere between nine and 15 million server systems worldwide, including servers in the French Navy, the UK Ministry of Defense, the Norwegian Police, and other large government organizations.

2010 – STUXNETDiscovered in June, Stuxnet was a computer worm targeting Siemens industrial software through Microsoft Windows. It was the first worm that corrupted industrial equipment. Stuxnet was also the first worm to include a PCL (programmable logic controller), software designed to hide its existence and progress.

2011 – GAME OVER ZEUSIn June, the U.S. Justice Department announced that an international, cooperative effort dubbed Operation Tovar succeeded in gaining control of the GameOver Zeus (GOZ) botnet (a linked network of compromised computers), which had emerged in 2011. Up to 1 million Microsoft Windows computers were infected and the malware was mostly used to access banking credentials in order to illegally withdraw funds. The GOZ malware was also used in the first example of "ransomware":

2012 – FLAMEFlame, a complex malware that attacked computers using Microsoft Windows, was discovered. Flame was capable of recording Skype conversations, audio, keyboard activity, network traffic and screenshots. It spread over a local network or USB stick. Flame also had a kill command, wiping out all traces of it from the computer.

2013- CRYPTOLOCKERCryptolocker, was discovered in 2013, which encrypts personal files and then demands payment in exchange for a key, or secret code, to unlock the files. According to the FBI, there were more than 121,000 victims in the United States and 234,000 victims worldwide, paying approximately $30 million in ransom between Sept. and Dec. 2013.

2014 – BACKOFFMalware designed to compromise Point-of-Sale (POS) systems to steal credit card data.

Sad to say, the history will continue. That makes keeping up with the latest antivirus and firewall technology ever so important.

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