History of Viruses, 1999 through 2001

History of Viruses, 1999 through 2001

The Melissa virus was the large story of 1999. Named following a lap dancer, Melissa was the very first major contacting virus. Upon infection, it used Microsoft Outlook to transmit copies of itself towards the first fifty names within the address book. March, 1999, first viewed it spread over the Internet, blocking up email servers everywhere it went.

1999 would be a busy year, using the ExploreZip virus showing up in Jerusalem in June. That one were built with a fake Zip file attached known as "Zipped_Files.EXE." When the user double-clicked on the file, it might set up a fake window saying "sorry, this zip file is corrupt." It might then go onto email everybody within the address book, and follow that by wrecking documents and files about the hard disk.

The LoveLetter, or "I Really Like You," virus hit in May of 2000. It had been another contacting virus, this time around using VBScript. The consumer would receive a contact by having an attachment usually known as "love-letter-for-you.txt.vbs". Spot the dual extension in the finish. Many Home windows systems won't display the extension, therefore the ".vbs" would disappear. The consumer, thinking he's searching in a .TXT file, feels liberated to open it up, and therefore infects his system. The LoveLetter virus is broadly referred to as most costly virus attack ever, with expert estimations up to ten billion dollars price of damage.

2001 was the banner year for infections. Sadmind in May, Sircam and Code Red-colored in This summer, Code Red-colored II in August, Nimda in September, and Klez in October. Sircam at random selected files from an infected machine and sent them in emails. Nimda assaulted through five different techniques, including security holes opened up by Sadmind and Code Red-colored II.

Through many of these virus attacks, many computer experts pointed to Microsoft because the problem--because many of these infections were attacking security defects in Microsoft programs, especially Ie and Outlook.