40 Years of Computer Viruses

The world's first computer virus, Creeper, was unleashed on an unsuspecting world in 1971, only a couple of years after the first computers were linked in a network. Most of us have only heard about it, since few had computers at the time. But that was only the beginning. Read about the major virus attacks over the years, like the 2000 I Love You virus.

At the dawn of the XXIst century, I LOVE YOU worm infected tens of millions of computers. As a fairly simple worm, I LOVE YOU presented itself as an incoming email with “I love you” in its subject line and infected the machine of users who opened the attachment. It then mailed itself to all of the contacts found on the infected user’s system.

Intriguing feature: While the author’s motivation clearly wasn’t about money, the damages were: When the dust settled, I LOVE YOU had cost companies around the world between $5 and $10 billion. Much of that cost can be attributed to the time spent “cleaning” infected machines.

More of the history of viruses is posted at Help Net Security. Link -via the Presurfer