Symantec Lists Worst Online Threats to Celebrate Internet's 40th Anniversary
By NED POTTER
This fall marks the 40th birthday of the Internet, and to celebrate it, Symantec, the manufacturer of online Security software, has put out a list of the "Top Web Threats in the History of the Internet."
Symantec has an interest, of course, in bringing you this treat. The company hopes the memory of worms gone by will entice you to buy its software to protect yourself.
But it's still an interesting list, and you may enjoy arguing with it, suggesting additions, even remembering times past -- unless, of course, your computer was hit by one of these worms or viruses.
So here goes. The descriptions are Symantec's.
By NED POTTER
This fall marks the 40th birthday of the Internet, and to celebrate it, Symantec, the manufacturer of online Security software, has put out a list of the "Top Web Threats in the History of the Internet."
Symantec has an interest, of course, in bringing you this treat. The company hopes the memory of worms gone by will entice you to buy its software to protect yourself.
But it's still an interesting list, and you may enjoy arguing with it, suggesting additions, even remembering times past -- unless, of course, your computer was hit by one of these worms or viruses.
So here goes. The descriptions are Symantec's.
Symantec Lists Worst Online Threats to Celebrate Internet's 40th Anniversary By NED POTTER This fall marks the 40th birthday of the Internet, and to ce... more
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Rank (best ever) 25
Score (all time) 2270.00
Created 09/03/09
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1
I Love You
2000
Who wouldn't open an e-mail with "I Love You" in the subject line? Well, that was the problem. By May 2000, 50 million infections of this worm had been reported. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the British Parliament all had to shut down their e-mail systems in order to purge the threat.
2
Conficker
2009
The Conficker worm has created a secure, worldwide infrastructure for cybercrime. The worm allows its creators to remotely install software on infected machines. What will that software do? We don't know. Most likely the worm will be used to create a botnet that will be rented out to criminals who want to send SPAM, steal IDs and direct users to online scams and phishing sites.
3
Melissa
1999
Melissa was an exotic dancer, and David L. Smith was obsessed with her and also with writing viruses. The virus he named after Melissa and released to the world on March 26, 1999, kicked off a period of high-profile threats that rocked the Internet between 1999 and 2005.
4
Slammer
2003
This fast-moving worm managed to temporarily bring much of the Internet to its knees in January 2003. The threat was so aggressive that it was mistaken by some countries to be an organized attack against them.
5
Nimda
2001
A mass-mailing worm that uses multiple methods to spread itself, within 22 minutes, Nimda became the Internet's most widespread worm. The name of the virus came from the reversed spelling of "admin."
6
Code Red
2001
Web sites affected by the Code Red worm were defaced by the phrase "Hacked By Chinese!" At its peak, the number of infected hosts reached 359,000.
7
Blaster
2003
Blaster is a worm that triggered a payload that launched a denial of service attack against windowsupdate.com, which included the message, "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"
8
Sasser
2004
This nasty worm spread by exploiting a vulnerable network port, meaning that it could spread without user intervention. Sasser wreaked havoc on everything from The British Coast Guard to Delta Airlines, which had to cancel some flights after its computers became infected.
9
Storm
2007
Poor Microsoft, always the popular target. Like Blaster and others before, this worm's payload performed a denial-of-service attack on www.microsoft.com. During Symantec's tests an infected machine was observed sending a burst of almost 1,800 e-mails in a five-minute period.
10
Morris
1988
An oldie but a goodie; without Morris the current threat "superstars" wouldn't exist. The Morris worm (or Internet worm) was created with innocent intentions. Robert Morris claims that he wrote the worm in an effort to gauge the size of the Internet. Unfortunately, the worm contained an error that caused it to infect computers multiple times, creating a denial of service.
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