Some of the Deadly Computer Viruses

Computer viruses can be bad as nightmares. Viruses can cause your computer to lose all the stored information, cause the machine to go on a pause for an uncertain period, or can cause unnecessary traffic blocking the network for hours. The consumer reports say that in the year 2008, about $8.5 billion losses to consumer have been caused due to viruses in the system. The computer viruses are, in actuality, programs, and are transmitted online. In the present article we will limit ourselves to a discussion of five crippling viruses.

1. Melissa: Melissa is a deadly virus that was created by David L. Smith in the year 1999. The virus was based on the Microsoft Word macro and was named after a very famous dancer from Florida. The virus spreads through email messages and tempts the recipient of the message into opening the message. The message when opened replicates. The replicated message is then sent to the top 50 people in the contact list of the person. The virus had caused several companies to stop using email programs for security issues.

2. ILOVEYOU: This virus came into existence one year after Melissa was unleashed. This virus was in the form a worm and was also transmitted online and came into the systems of the recipients in the form of a love letter from a secret admirer. The file attached to the email caused the trouble. The virus was a standalone program bearing the name ILOVEYOU, and it replicated itself. This was a digital menace that had issued from Philippines. The file name of the original worm was LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs.

3. The Klez Virus: The Klez Virus set into motion a whole new generation of viruses, having debuted in the later part of the year 2001. The virus entered a computer in the form of an email message and replicated itself like other viruses, following which it went to the email addresses stored in the address book of the recipient. The virus was potent enough to abort all functions of the computer. This virus followed the method of spoofing where the address of the sender of an email is, in reality, different from what it shows to the recipient.

4. Code Red and Code Red ll: These worms came into being in the year 2001. The worms attacked the operating systems that run Windows NT and Windows 2000. The vulnerability was essentially buffer over flown trouble which indicates that when the machines that ran on the operating systems received more information than the buffers could handle, it started overwriting adjacent memory. The Code Red ll is a potent virus that causes the owner of the system to lose control where a remote owner can have access into the working of the computer.

5. Nimda: The virus Nimda originated in 2001 and propagated the fastest. The primary targets of Nimda were the Internet servers. The virus had the potential to cripple the traffic on the Internet. There were numerous ways in which the Nimda virus entered a system. Transmitted online, the virus attacked