![]() ![]() Once the job was done, Slammer spread rapidly, doubling the number of victims every few seconds, and just ten minutes after it was released in the wild, the number of infected computers grew to 75,000. It sparked at 05:30 UTC on January 25, 2003, infecting its first server. Outages in 911 service in Seattle, the crash of the Bank of America’s ATM service, and cancellation of several Continental Airlines flights - these are just a few examples of what SQL Slammer (or simply Slammer) is capable of. The takeaway: be careful when opening strange attachments in a love letter, even if it comes from your love interest. The sudden rush caused by this “love” bug caused the Pentagon, the British Government, and the CIA to completely shut down their mail systems. ILOVEYOU infected over ten million Windows PCs. The worm also sent copies of itself to all contacts in the user’s address book. Clicking on it activated a Visual Basic script (a programming language which allows programmers to modify code), and the worm started overwriting random files on the user’s PC. The malware was hidden in the attachment called “ ”. The virus used emails as a transmission channel, disguising itself as a love letter from one of its victim’s contacts. Romantic as it sounds, the ILOVEYOU virus is not the kind of a gift you’d want to receive on Valentine’s Day. The latter helped it spread rapidly and caused huge network outages. Though its main target is believed to be internet Servers running Windows NT and 2000, Nimda also affected regular users’ PCs running Windows. ![]() No wonder, since the worm used five different transmission routes. Within an hour after its release, Nimda reached the top spot of all reported attacks. But it’s actually a computer virus known as Nimda (admin spelled backwards) that hit the internet back in 2001. NimdaĪ worm, a virus, and a Trojan horse all in one sounds like something out of a horror movie. It’s believed that Morris Worm infected around 6,000 major Unix machines, causing up to ten million US dollars of damage. Finally, it caused crashes and made the computer completely useless. ![]() The worm was supposed to ask whether there was already a copy running on the computer but instead it just continuously made copies of itself, slowing the system down. Created to highlight security flaws in Unix systems, its founder Robert Morris, made a fatal error that transformed the worm from a potentially harmless software to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack machine. Let us start our journey with Morris Worm or the “Great Worm”, which is believed to be the pioneer among computer worms distributed through the internet. ![]()
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February 2023
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