6 Amusingly Stupid Computer Viruses
1) Trojans and WormsVirus: Trojan, Worm - the very words conjure up crossbones and skulls, the symbol of danger. These malicious programs are the scourge of the Internet, the proof that every innovative and useful technology has an equivalent downside - one that has the most adverse consequences at times. They steal your passwords, corrupt your files memory and OS, open backdoors to your systems, install quirky programs that replicate and spread, and generally cause your computer to behave abnormally.
But there was a time not so long ago when viruses were written just for the fun of it - not to create any real harm, but rather to see if they worked. The creators were usually extremely clever young programmers who spent most of their time in front of their computers. Though the files spread rapidly from one system to another, all they did was produce some funny faces or a cascade of raindrops on your screen. But then, these form just a drop in the ocean of malware that roams through the Internet.
2) The "Very Funny" or "I Love You" Virus: This one hit the Internet in the year 2000 and corrupted image and music files on user systems. Identified initially by the words "I love you" or "Joke: Very Funny" in the subject line of an email, the virus was later passed around as newer, more malicious versions that overwrote important files needed to boot the computer. These masqueraded as Mother's Day messages or Lithuanian flirting techniques - some email came with the tag "Let's meet for a cup of coffee," in Lithuanian, of course. Bolder versions took advantage of the scare created by their predecessors, and pretended to be representatives from anti-virus providers. They asked users to execute the attachment to eradicate all viruses from their computers!
3) The HPS Virus: The first of its kind written for the Windows 98 OS, this virus took its name from a dreaded disease transmitted by rats. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) is known to cause acute respiratory distress in the human body, but its digital namesake was nowhere near as harmful. If present on your system, the HPS virus went into action on Saturdays and flipped over uncompressed bitmaps horizontally. In plain English, it produced a mirror image of your screen. An interesting snippet about this virus: HPS hit the Web in early 1998, even before the Windows 98 operating system was available for commercial use.
4) The Caric-A Worm: Former US president Bill Clinton provided a lot of fodder for the gossip mills during his tenor at the White House, and as late as 2002 as this famous worm proved. Also known as the Bill Clinton and the MyLife-B worm, this malicious program was activated after opening an email's attachment and displayed a cartoon of Clinton playing the saxophone equipped with a bra popping out of the sax's mouth. The writers of this worm tried to be clever by adding a line to the end of the email, supposedly from anti-virus vendor McAfee, which claimed the email contained no viruses.
5) The Brain Virus: The brainchild of two Pakistani brothers in 1986, this virus was not meant to be a virus at all. The siblings had written it with the intent to protect their medical software from being pirated. It ended up being the first ever virus to infect the PC. Known by various names, including Lahore, Pakistani, Pakistani Brain, Brain-A, UIUC, Ashar, and Pakistani flu, this pretty-large virus affected the boot sector, changed the disk label to (c)Brain, and displayed the text:
Welcome to the Dungeon (c) 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!!
6) The Skulls Trojan horse: The rapid advances in the field of mobile technology meant that the malware guys were not far behind. The year 2004 saw this Trojan horse unleashed on Nokia smartphones that ran the Symbian operating system. Users infected with Skulls A found their screen icons replaced with ominous skulls and crossbones, and their handsets being reduced to mere telephones. They could only make and receive calls, other smart functions were disabled. Skulls or Skulls A spawned a series of alphabetical versions, like B, C and L each affecting the phones in a different manner. Version B rendered the phone almost useless just like A, but did not display skulls; C tried to disable the F-Secure anti-virus software; L was probably the most dangerous version - it pretended to be the F-Secure mobile anti-virus solution. All versions of the Trojan snuck the Cabir worm into the phones. This proof-of-concept malware for mobile phones spread through Bluetooth connections and used up the handset's battery power by constantly searching for other devices with open Bluetooth connections to infect.
