Worst computer virus ever

[TechHead87]

I'm been reading up on computer virii and what not. What would you all say has been the worst virus that you've even heard of/experienced?

 

[CKent]

AOL 9.0 Optimized.

 

[BW86]

Bonzi Buddy

 

[microAmp]

PCWorld's thoughts on the worst.

 

[Xyclone]

Originally posted by: BW86
Bonzi Buddy

QFT

 

[AdamSnow]

Gator 🙂

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: RBachman
AOL 9.0 Optimized.

indeed

 

[WobbleWobble]

The CIH/Chernobyl Virus, it actually could kill hardware (the mobo BIOS)

 

[TechHead87]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
The CIH/Chernobyl Virus, it actually could kill hardware (the mobo BIOS)

Holy $%$%! Link(s)??

 

[DaWhim]

CIH was back in 95 or 96. it was bad.

 

[mechBgon]

In general, what I find most scary at this point are rootkits. I'd rather have my mobo's BIOS chip scrambled any day. Don't play with teh warez, kids...

 

[Velk]

Worst, probably a tossup between the bios killers and the one that progressively encrypted your harddrive so you couldn't boot it from any device which didn't contain a copy of the virus. You could tell that one because it gave slightly off disk read errors when you tried to access write protected disks ( It didn't read the error messages from command.com so displayed the wrong thing depending on version ).

Most interesting, in my opinion, was the MTE (mutation engine), which didn't really do anything itself, but rather searched for other virii in the same way a virus scanner did, and then tried to rewrite them randomly so that they didn't match any known signatures. As far as I know, it didn't work all that well, but was still an interesting concept.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Meh, motherboards can be replaced, data that isn't backed up cannot be replaced so easily.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: TechHead87

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
The CIH/Chernobyl Virus, it actually could kill hardware (the mobo BIOS)

Holy $%$%! Link(s)??

Info from CERT

Nowadays, I agree that rootkits are the worst kind of infections. Very undetectable...

 

[Lyfer]

Originally posted by: RBachman
AOL 9.0 Optimized.

Real One Player a close 2nd.

 

[omissible]

The Internet Worm.

(Yes, at one time there was only one Internet Worm. And it was got its name not because it spread over the Internet--it actually brought down most of the Internet. Luckily, back then, there weren't many people on the Internet.)

http://world.std.com/~franl/worm.html

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble

Originally posted by: TechHead87

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
The CIH/Chernobyl Virus, it actually could kill hardware (the mobo BIOS)

Holy $%$%! Link(s)??

Info from CERT

Nowadays, I agree that rootkits are the worst kind of infections. Very undetectable...

Contracted the Chernobyl virus a few times. Was hit once and HARD, no hardware lost though.

Its scary, look at my profile. Born 1 year before Chernobyl happened, imagine waking up on your Bday and your PC infected with one of the worst virii created. Not fun I tells ya.

 

[Schadenfroh]

p-1

 

[GimpyOne]

The monkey.b virus. As long as you had nothing written to the first or last sector of a hard drive or floppy you were ok, but it was the most difficult virus I have ever tried to get rid of.

Had it on several lab computers in about 1996-1997. At the time, no commercially available virus scanners could handle it. I went through half a dozen home made boot discs before I finally got rid of the damn thing. Then had to keep doing at as every moron with a floppy kept reinfecting all the computers.


About six months later, Mcaffee and Norton both started removing the freaking thing!