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The Creeper Infects
The virus infected the Arpanet company. It displayed the message "Im the Creeper. Catch me if you can." FIrst signs of malware and adware. -
Stoned Virus Appears
The most widespread virus in the first decade of viruses; stoned was a boot sector/.mbr infector that would count the number of reboots from its original infection and display the phrase “your computer is now stoned.” -
The First Multipartite Appears
It is a virus with multiple parts.The virus was discovered in October 1989 by Fridrik Skulason. It infected both executable .COM-files and boot sectors. The different parts could target different parts of a system. -
Michelangelo is discovered
It was a designed virus to detect specific targets but eventually got more spread. Eventually the virus died off as less people were using the specific software. -
World Concept
The first Microsoft Word Macro virus in the wild, Word Concept would enter the phrase, “That’s enough to prove my point” This launched the second era of computer viruses, and was important in that it brought computer viruses to a much less skilled level of hacker. -
CIH/Chernobyl
The Chernobyl virus was the most destructive virus ever seen, up to it’s time. Hitting on the 26th of any month. It would both erase the hard drive, and wipe out the flash ROM BIOS of the computer in question. -
Melissa
The first major virus to spread via email, and really the beginning of the Internet virus era. Although Melissa was non destructive, it was disruptive in the fact that it would both replicate and fill email boxes wherever it went. -
VBS/Loveletter worm appears
The VBS/Loveletter ('ILOVEYOU') worm appeared. As of 2004 this is the most costly virus to business, causing upwards of 10 billion dollars in damage. -
Santy Is Launched
Santy is a computer worm created in Perl to exploit a vulnerability in phpBB software which used Google to spread across the internet. Within 24 hours of its release on 20 December 2004, a large number of websites (estimated by some at 30,000 to 40,000) were attacked by Santy. -
Trojan Is Identified
In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs.
