Classic MS-DOS Viruses
Video
Computer Virus Timeline
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872842.html
If you own or use a computer, you are vulnerable to malware. Computer viruses are deployed every day in an attempt to wreak havoc, whether it be by stealing your personal passwords, or as weapons of international sabotage.
1949
Theories for self-replicating programs are first developed.
1981
Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses “in the wild,” or in the public domain. Found on the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.
1983
Fred Cohen, while working on his dissertation, formally defines a computer virus as “a computer program that can affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly evolved) copy of itself.”
1986
Two programmers named Basit and Amjad replace the executable code in the boot sector of a floppy disk with their own code designed to infect each 360kb floppy accessed on any drive. Infected floppies had “© Brain” for a volume label.
1987
The Lehigh virus, one of the first file viruses, infects command.com files.
1988
One of the most common viruses, Jerusalem, is unleashed. Activated every Friday the 13th, the virus affects both .exe and .com files and deletes any programs run on that day.
MacMag and the Scores virus cause the first major Macintosh outbreaks.
1990
Symantec launches Norton AntiVirus, one of the first antivirus programs developed by a large company.
1991
Tequila is the first widespread polymorphic virus found in the wild. Polymorphic viruses make detection difficult for virus scanners by changing their appearance with each new infection.
1992
1300 viruses are in existence, an increase of 420% from December of 1990.
The Dark Avenger Mutation Engine (DAME) is created. It is a toolkit that turns ordinary viruses into polymorphic viruses. The Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL) is also made available. It is the first actual virus creation kit.
1994
Good Times email hoax tears through the computer community. The hoax warns of a malicious virus that will erase an entire hard drive just by opening an email with the subject line “Good Times.” Though disproved, the hoax resurfaces every six to twelve months.
1995
Word Concept becomes one of the most prevalent viruses in the mid-1990s. It is spread through Microsoft Word documents.
1996
Baza, Laroux (a macro virus), and Staog viruses are the first to infect Windows95 files, Excel, and Linux respectively.
1998
Currently harmless and yet to be found in the wild, StrangeBrew is the first virus to infect Java files. The virus modifies CLASS files to contain a copy of itself within the middle of the file's code and to begin execution from the virus section.
The Chernobyl virus spreads quickly via .exe files. As the notoriety attached to its name would suggest, the virus is quite destructive, attacking not only files but also a certain chip within infected computers.
Two California teenagers infiltrate and take control of more than 500 military, government, and private sector computer systems.
Share
& Comment
Tweet