A computer virus is the biggest nightmare for any of us. Ever since the inception of the internet, computer  systems are vulnerable to malware and virus. These virus not only cause problems with the software and the operating system, they also cause havoc with the hardware and can even crash the hard disk.  Here are just a few of the viruses that brought large organisations to their knees.

Code red

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Code red was released in the year  2001 and had infected around 400000 computer servers, including one on which the website of The White House was running. It is called Code Red because the discoverers of the virus were drinking Code Red Mountain Dew while this virus was discovered.

 

ILOVEYOU

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This virus was created in Philippines and was circulated in the form of an email attachment which was made to look like a confession of love. Once clicked, it would send itself to all the people in the mail list. It caused damage of over five billion dollars.

 

Melissa

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Created in 1999 by David L. Smith, this virus came in the form of a word document that claimed to have the password for pornographic sites. This made people curious and download that file. Once they tried to open, this virus launched itself and automatically sent off emails from infected computers causing huge and unmanageable traffic on email servers.

 

Cryptolocker

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Cryptolocker was one of the unique torjan horse type virus which used various methods such as email to spread itself. It encrypted certain files on the hard drive and even if you removed this torjan house, those file would remain encrypted. Only way was to get decrypted those files was to pay a  ransom.

 

Author: Anusheel

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