The Greatest Viruses of All Time

Uniblue THE GREATEST www.uniblue.com HUMAN AND DIGITAL VIRUSES OFALL TIME MOST LIVES TAKEN NAME DAMAGE The Black Death (Yersinia pestis) 75,000,000 to 200,000,000 dead ETIOLOGY Thought to have started in China and brought to Europe via the Silk Road METHOD OF INFECTION Transmission through a bite from infected flea ERA peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350 "They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And so many died thatall believed it was the end of the world." The Plague in Siena:An Italian Chronicle MOST COMPLEX (MAN-MADE) NAME ETIOLOGY Stuxnet Unknown, potential candidates for honour include the US and Israeli goverment dubious CREATOR DAMAGE 30% reduction in Iran's Nuclear centrifuge Unknown, studies suggest well funded team effort operational capacity PAYLOAD The worm worked by first causing infected Iranian IR-1 centrifuge to increase and decrease their speeds. The stresses from the excessive, then slower speeds, caused the aluminium centrifugal tubes to expand, often forcing parts of the centrifuges into sufficient contact with each other to METHOD OF INFECTION Initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives, and then exploited other techniques such as peer-to-peer RPC to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet destroy the machine ERA Discovered in June 2010ce MOST VIRAL NAME CREATOR DAMAGE Nimda R.P. alias 1,500,000,000 δδόδόόόά δδ δ δ δ δ ETIOLOGY China METHOD OF INFECTION PAYLOAD Email, network shares, Compromised Websites Distributed Denial of service (DDOS) ERA September 2001ce Nimda, which is "admin" spelled in reverse, wasnt as financially damaging as some other viruses, but it gains a higher spot on the list based on its method of attack and its timing. Released shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The spreading speed of the virus was frightening enough, but the panic level was raised by rumours that Nimda was the second prong of the terrorist attacks. MOST LETHAL (TO HUMANS) NAME ERA Ebola August 1976ce (First records) (Zaire ebolavirus) ETIOLOGY Yambuku, Democratic PAYLOAD Republic of the Congo Death through severe internal bleeding METHOD OF INFECTION Direct contact with infected host via blood or bodily fluids and also with contaminated medical equipment DAMAGE 50-90% mortality rate MOST LETHAL (TO PCs) NAME CREATOR DAMAGE CIH Virus Chen Ing Hau 250,000,000 (Chernobyl) ERA 1998 έ6δ06δ0όδ PAYLOAD The virus overwrites the first megabyte (1024KB) of the hard drive with zeroes, beginning at sector 0. This deletes the contents of the partition table, and may cause the machine to hang. The second payload tries to write to the Flash BIOS O ETIOLOGY Taiwan, Republic of China O METHOD OF INFECTION Spreads by integrating itself into more files each time the host program is run. FUNCTION Worked by filling up empty spaces with copies of itself, wiping data and eventually overwriting the BIOS chip The virus was reported to have damaged millions of hard drives worldwide and caused untold economic damage. That said, Hau was never jailed for all the damage he caused, throwing those wild estimates into question. So, in the end, Chernobyl earns its spot based on the potential damage it was designed to do, if not the actual damage it caused. SOURCES www.wikipedia.com I www.microsoft.com I www.f-secure.com I http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/ http://computerhowstuffworks.com I http://www.pcworld.com I http://listverse.com I http://www.itsecurity.com http://www.doomsdayguide.org I http://www.cert.org Uniblue" www.uniblue.com