You'll be glad that antivirus programs can combat these viruses now. Pray that no other viruses come out as destructive as these.

1. The Most
Notorious
Computer Viruses

2. 1. Melissa
In 1999, a computer virus began spreading like
wildfire via email messages. Called "Melissa,"
creator David L. Smith said he named it after a
Florida exotic dancer. And in the same way that a
dancer can allure you with a striptease, the Melissa
virus tempted people to open these emails with the
message "Here is that document that you asked
for, don't show it to anybody else." Once opened,
the virus then replicates itself by going after the top
fifty people in the recipient's address book.

3. MELISSA EMAIL
1. It may be from someone you
know. But they don't know they
sent it.
2. The subject line will read,
"Important Message From" and the
name may be someone you know.
3. The body of the mail will read,
"Here is that document you asked
for don't show anyone else ;-)"
4. The attachment, where this nasty
little bug lives, has the name of
list.doc.

4. 2. I Love You
A year later, another heavy-hitter emerged, this time
from the Philippines. Among other things, it could
copy itself several times and hide the replicants in
various separate folders; add new files to registry
keys; replace several important system files with
copies of itself; and download a file called WIN-
BUGSFIX.EXE (a password-stealing program) and
run it.

5. 3. Klez
In 2001, a year after I Love
You hit, a far more sinister one
came out of the woodwork.
Klez, when activated,
multiplied itself through a
victim's email list much like
Melissa, and rendered desktop
and laptop parts themselves to
be inoperable. Before it was
totally eradicated, its creators
even fine-tuned it so that it
would be intelligent enough to
copy the email address it was
coming from.

6. 4. Code Red and Code Red II
Also in the same year as Klez, the Code Red and Code Red II
viruses appeared. These viruses exploited a weakness in the
programming of the Windows 2000 and Windows NT
operating systems. The weakness in question was the OSes'
buffer overflow problem. This problem occurs when a
computer receives more information than the system's buffers
can process and starts to overwrite adjacent memory.

7. • The first Code Red infamously
attacked web servers at the
White House by implementing
a Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) attack. This attack
caused every infected
computer to contact the White
House's servers, thereby
overloading them.
• Meanwhile, Code Red II-
infected computers were no
longer operable by their
owners because the virus
created a backdoor program in
their computers' systems,
allowing a remote user to gain
control of their machines.

8. 5. Nimda
Still in 2001, a virus named Nimda (that's "admin"
spelled backwards) spread throughout the internet.
Nimda was notorious for being the fastest-
spreading virus then, taking only 22 minutes to get
from initial release to the top list of reported
attacks.

9. 5. Nimda
Despite being able to infect
home PCs just as well, its
main target was internet
servers, with the intention of
slowing these down
significantly. It travelled
through the internet
employing various methods,
not the least of which was
email propagation. This
adeptness was what allowed
it to multiply itself across
thousands of servers in
record time.

10. THANK YOU
ORIGINAL POST:
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Viruses&id=7244021
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