It means that your personal data will not be personal anymore — read the next paragraph. Location, language setups, cookie files, search history, activity hours data — even your PC configuration will be leaked to the crooks. Depending on the type of attack — massive or individual — this information will be sold to third parties or used for further cyber attacks. Spyware is extremely silent — it tries to stay in your system as long as possible to get more personal information about you.
Spyware stealthiness makes it a tough nut for antivirus programs. Security tools often struggle to detect spyware correctly with a heuristic engine.
What can be worse than getting your personal information stolen? Sure, getting your banking information stolen. And we are talking not only about card numbers and CVV code — they are important, but almost useless without the transaction approval. Modern banking trojans aim at your online banking — exactly, on login and password for it. Having them, crooks are free to manage your money. Sometimes, banking trojans are combined with other malware — embedded into spyware, rogue software or phishing trojans.
Since they aim at seriously protected things — online banking login forms — they are made by professionals. And it is a bad idea to ignore their efficiency — otherwise, you will have to ignore zeros on your banking account. Or, possibly, huge credit lines. This type of malware was always very rare, but its danger can not be underestimated. Wiper malware is one that destroys your disk partitions. That malware is not about making money on you — it is just for revenge or mischief.
Having your disk partition broken, you lose access to all your files and also to your operating system. UEFI is just not able to find the boot record of your OS — all data you have on your disks are just a weird mixture of non-structured bytes. Wiper malware is so rare that some of the anti-malware programs do not even have them in their detection databases. Such a malicious program needs access to your system at the driver level. Overall, such tools are considered dangerous because of their questionable functionality.
And the chance to get your logical disks ruined complements this danger. What is more painful than to get your disk partitions destroyed? Yes, to get your files ciphered. While partitions can be recovered — thanks to the special tools available for LiveCD launch — files attacked by ransomware are impossible to fix.
Exactly, there are decryption tools for several ransomware families, but none of them give you a guarantee that you will get your files back. Decrypting it with brute force can take more time than our universe exists. The only lucky chance of getting your files back without paying the ransom is to get encrypted with the flaw-by-design ransomware. The only well-known ransomware family that has flaws in its encryption key is HiddenTear — but its most modern variants have these breaches fixed.
Another way to get the decryption key is to wait for the ransomware group to shut down. But even this does not give you any guarantees. Ransomware also deals heavy damage to your system configurations. The WannaCry episode illustrated how the most outdated operating systems are vulnerable to attacks. That is why updating your system is a standard security practice.
The Zeuz theft tool hit the web for the first time in It was more like a suite , and it included several programs that composed the global Zeus botnet. Zeuz arose from Eastern Europe and transferred money into secret bank accounts.
There was no single, lonely, poor programmer behind Zeuz. Instead, it had an entire organization supporting and profiting from it. In , more than members of the virus crime ring were arrested. Zeuz is not as prominent at present, but it spawned a new generation of malware as other developers used pieces of the Zeuz code to integrate into their own, more recent, worms and viruses.
Zeuz-related documented damage ascended to million USD. The costs in terms of lost productivity, morale, and undocumented theft must be several times higher. If we estimate all that damage and adjust for inflation, Zeuz costs at least about 4 billion USD while active. Unfortunately, it left no trace in the hardware like files on a hard drive , which complicated the forensic analysis.
Slammer would select an IP address at random and explore the security vulnerabilities in the target system.
If it found the target environment feasible for the attack, it would replicate to the target system. Once it had a good number of infected computers ready, it launched DDoS attacks on some selected internet servers, thus ruining their traffic. Banking computers in the US and Canada had the worse experience with Slammer. The worm even forced ATMs to go offline in multiple places. No definitive solution was ever found to prevent SQP Slammer infections.
In fact, saw the attack surface again from computers located in Mexico, China, and Ukraine. The estimated number of systems with a CryptoLocker infection is about a quarter million. It seems you can write excellent and effective code without mastering English. This message comes along a payment demand, leaving no doubts about what to do next: you pay for the privilege of deciphering your very own files, or you lose all control over your system.
CryptoLocker used the Gameover Zeus botnet to distribute and install millions of CryptoLocker copies in vulnerable systems. Sophos Security estimates the cost of average ransomware hit at , USD. If we estimate additionally that CryptoLocker successfully attacked some corporations, the total cost would have been around million USD, give or take a lot.
Sven Jaschan was a computer science student in Germany, 17 years old. By the time he got arrested in , he was already of age. There was a , bounty on his head , as the creator of Sasser. However, one of his friends blew the whistle on him. Instead, he also created the Netsky. The legal system gave Mr. Jaschan a suspended sentence when it became clear that he was a minor as he was writing the code. Sasser crashed millions of computers globally, and with an apparently low infection rate, it incurred damages of around million USD.
Melissa is a name in Greek mythology, and it refers to the first honey bee. But in , there was also a Florida exotic dancer called Melissa who caught the attention of David L. Smith, the author of the eponymous computer virus. This one started as an infected Word document that the author posted to the Usenet.
He persuaded thousands of Usenet lurkers to download it, claiming it was a list of working passwords for adult websites.
Eventually, the unavoidable incident happened as people downloaded the file and opened it. Upon opening, a macro in the file would come alive and release its payload. Thus Melissa reproduced itself. In addition, Melissa would show itself by inserting a Simpsons reference into the corrupted Word files now and then. Smith uploaded the fateful Word file through a stolen AOL account. Unfortunately for him, this allowed the authorities to trace the file back to him, so they arrested him before a week had passed.
Once caught, he worked along with the FBI to capture other virus writers —the Anna Kournikova virus author being the most well-known case. His cooperation earned him a reduced sentence 20 months and a USD fine — he was supposed to serve ten years. Conficker, or Downup or Downadup, is a worm of unknown origin for Windows that first showed its ugly face in This malware proved how dangerous the overabundant security gaps in Windows could become as it exploited them to create a botnet.
Nine million systems became hosts to Cornficker in every imaginable country , including places like private businesses, governments, individuals. Very few worms managed to infect so many computers and do so much damage — nine billion USD.
The virus used a vulnerability in a Windows network service that Microsoft took too long to patch. The active infection reset account lockout practices, blocked the Windows update and antivirus websites, turned off the services that could identify it, and locked out specific user accounts.
Once all those changes are affected, the worm downloads and installs another piece of software that turns the computer into a slave in a botnet. Here are a few more worthy mentions extending the legacy of the worst computer viruses:. The difference between a virus and a worm is very straightforward to understand. A virus is a parasitic code that needs another program to activate it or make it work. On the other hand, a worm can run without any help. Viruses and worms get into systems in many ways.
For instance, the most frequent method of getting infections right now is to click on attachments, open files, or follow link s in unwanted emails. How is that possible? Because many a virus will impersonate somebody else to persuade you to open that link or launch that file. But, since not every virus works the same way, you cannot generalize how your computer should act upon getting a virus. Nonetheless, you can certainly avoid a few careless habits that often lead to virus infections on your computer, phone, or any other device.
Do you have an email from AppleSupport gmail. Likewise, be paranoid about attachments. Your late distant granny would have preferred contacting you directly instead of asking somebody else to hand over her remaining property to you. Not every email you receive is legit. Today, digital advertising is the bane of computer security. This is because a lot of malware spreads through ads on malicious websites. You can prevent this risk by avoiding fishy sites. But, of course, not all the ads in the world are dangerous.
Or you could adopt a more active measure. For example, some VPN services can block ads. Likewise, you can use the more dedicated tools — the adblockers — for this purpose. While free WiFi hotspots are an attractive marketing strategy from hotels and other public places, they are seldom secure. Often, these public WiFi harbor cybercriminals who keep looking for victims to infect their devices and steal data. Unless you have a robust antivirus and a VPN on your device, avoid connecting to such free WiFi to protect your online privacy and security.
Just open your antivirus and see what it tells you. For example, Windows 10 has a Windows Security feature, which includes an impressive protection tool against viruses, the Windows Defender. You can even turn on its notifications to watch when and how it scans your system. The study of computer malware is not an established science at all. In fact, much of it relies on artistic intuition, ironically.
So how did we choose our top twelve entries for the most malicious computer viruses? We considered estimates of lost work, infection length, the estimated number of infections. Also, cleaning up a virus takes resources, and we considered that too. The truth is that nobody has any accurate data. Still, we considered several reports and shared with you something that was somehow common among the various sources.
The world spends at least 55 billion USD cleaning up and repairing the damage that results from the spread of viruses and worms. Mydoom has the record for damage, at 38 billion, but there have been many other strong hits. However, the future looks bright regarding malware and virus prevention measures.
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