COMPUTER VIRUS CATALOG

AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE WORST VIRUSES IN COMPUTER HISTORY

Cookie Monster Virus by Lawrence Slater

Cookie Monster was the first computer virus, created in the 1960s, which froze people's machines and demanded cookies. You could simply unlock your computer again by typing the word ‘cookie’.

Stoned by White Russian

Stoned is the way of the walk… and an early DOS virus. The original virus doesn't do much damage, other than displaying the message: ‘Your computer is stoned. Legalize Marijuana'. Later Stoned variants, however, did grind your system.

Marburg by HORT

Marburg infects .EXE and .SCR files and draws the all too familiar critical error icon everywhere on your screen. The Windows virus spread like crazy in August '98, when it was included on the master CD of popular MGM/EA game ‘Wargames'.

Madman by Jay Wright

Madman is a DOS virus infecting .EXE files. Whenever you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL the virus displays an ASCII picture of an angry red-faced amigo. Hit your keyboard again and the virus displays the creepy message: ‘Nothing can save you here, friend – you're in my world now!'.

Techno by Joost & Nick

DOS virus Techno infects .COM files. The virus activates randomly one out of ten times and uses the CPU audio device to play a fist pumping techno track. Meanwhile, the word ‘TECHNO' covers the entire screen.

OlympicAIDS by Julien Rivoire

DOS virus OlympicAIDS infects .COM files and activates on the day after the 1994 Winter Olympics started. The virus draws the Olympic rings and pokes fun at the official Games mascots. Next, it corrupts your hard drive and freezes all system activity. Not very sportsmanlike.

Implant by Karborn

DOS virus Implant displays a high res photo of a blonde bombshell wearing nothing but lingerie. The quality of the image is remarkable since DOS runs video in text mode. After rebooting your computer you will notice the babe erased your entire hard drive.

Lichen by Jonathan Zawada

Lichen infects .COM and .EXE files and activates one month later. Whenever there's no keyboard activity for longer than a minute, the DOS virus produces lichen inspired visuals best described as kryptonite on crack.

LSD by Cay Hickson

The LSD virus is far out… This DOS virus overwrites all the files in the current directory and then displays a druggy video effect. Next it shows a message from your local dealer: ‘LSD ViRuS 1.0 Coded By Death Dealer 4/29/94 [TeMpEsT -94]'.

Anna Kournikova by Sarah Mazzetti

Besides being a tennis super star / part time bikini model, Anna Kournikova is also a very effective Windows worm. The worm is designed to trick users into opening an email purportedly containing a picture of the celeb. Instead, it plunders your inbox and sends itself to your entire Outlook contact list.

Skulls by Anthony Burrill

Skulls targets Nokia phones running Symbian OS. After infection, the trojan replaces all app icons with scalps and tries to drain the battery. Skulls spreads itself by texting malicious links to all contacts, including ex-girlfriends and your evil boss. This results in sky-high phone bills and occasionally sweet revenge.

Stuxnet by Mel Nguyen

Stuxnet is a joint effort of the US and Israel, designed to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. This highly sophisticated Windows worm reportedly destroyed roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, by causing them to spin out of control. Mission accomplished.

Happy99 by Joshua Checkley

Happy99 is the first modern worm, spreading via email attachments and newsgroups. When executed, the worm shows animated fireworks, wishes you a ‘Happy New Year!' and modifies a bunch of system files in the background. Nothing serious compared with New Year's hangover.

Kenzero by Felipe Pantone

Selectronic by Mike Perry

Selectronic infects .COM files and embeds itself into the memory. On Friday the 13th the DOS virus displays the text: “Countdown to Extinction…”, plays a super cheesy MIDI tune and runs an animation of the Grim Reaper marching across the screen.

The Nopel Virus by Merijn Hos

Nople virus by Merijn Hos depicts the Windows NT worm that spreads over local and shared network drives. When activated, the worm runs an animation that looks like a mass of fuzzy looking multi-colored strings and displays a note that's translated to: “It's time to format your disk.”

Melissa Virus by Saiman Chow

Named after the virus author's favourite exotic dancer. It's a worm that infects Word documents and spreads through email as an attachment. If an attachment containing the virus is opened, it replicates and sends itself out to people in the infected user's email address book.

Ika-Tako Virus by Saïd Kinos

The Ika-Tako virus (Japanese for Squid-Octopus) looks like a regular music file and was hosted on P2P networks lurking for the unsuspecting user. When downloaded and opened, it replaced as many of your files as possible with pictures of squids.

I Love You Virus by Darius-Ou-Dahao

In 2000, the “I Love You” virus spread to over 55-million computers worldwide, with the inflicted damage reaching billions of dollars.

The Crash Virus by Andreu Serra

Crash is a DOS virus infecting .COM and .EXE files. On activation, Crash freezes the screen and runs an endless loop of rubbish characters containing all the secrets of the Universe.

The Code Red Virus by Thomas Slater

The Code Red virus was named after the drink Code Red Mountain Dew. It causes the infected computer to initiate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the White House's website.

Melting Worm Virus by Michael Willis

The Windows worm infected from the EXE file is Melting.worm. Spread the infection by sending mail with MeltingScreen.exe executable file using Outlook's address book, stop the user's computer as a screen saver.

Beda Virus by Sam Coldy

Running an infected COM file on Beda, an animation of RGB color was displayed on the screen.

Sources & References

Original Work – Bas van de Poel
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