1. Creeper
The first real computer virus, Creeper was released "in lab" in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the Internet’s ancestor, according to Guillaume Lovet, Senior Director, FortiGuard Labs.
The Creeper searched for a machine on the network, shifted to it, and displayed a message on the system “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” and started over, thereby hopping from system to system.
2. Elk Cloner
This virus was written in 1982 "by a 15-year old as a way to booby trap his friends' Apple II computer systems without physical access to them, Elk Cloner spread via floppy disks," according to FortiGuard Labs's Lovet. "Infected machines displayed a harmless poem, dedicated to the virus' glory."
3. Morris worm
Chris Larsen, Malware Lab Architect for Blue Coat Systems, points to the Morris worm, created in 1988 by Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris, as the first internet worm.
"It's the one that got everyone's attention and demonstrated the possibility of computer malware for causing chaos," adds Kevin Haley, Director, Symantec Security Response.
4. Michelangelo
Lovet says, the dormant Michelangelo virus was designed to awaken in 1991 on March 6th, the birthday of Renaissance artist Michelangelo, and erase critical parts of infected computers’ hard drives.
"The promises of destruction it carried spawned a media frenzy. In the weeks preceding March 6th, media relayed, and some may say amplified, experts’ predictions forecasting 5 million computers going definitively down. These Tut Is Provided By Cyber Elite.Yet, on March 6th, only a few thousand data losses were reported – and public trust in AV companies’ ethics was tainted for a while."
5. Melissa
The Melissa virus which was breeded via infected Microsoft Word documents was found in 1999. The virus mailed itself to Outlook contacts of the contaminated user.
The bug was created to honor Melissa, a stripper he’d met in Florida.
"Whether he conquered her heart this way is somewhat unlikely, but one thing is sure: the malicious code earned him 20 months in jail and a $5,000 fine," says Lovet.
6. I Love You
Discovered in 2000, the "I love you" or "Love Letter" malware was not the first example of using social engineering to infect computers, but it was the first massively successful one," says Haley.
The malware was the foundation of cyber social engineering which works even today. The concept behind was that everyone wants to know that someone loves them. And it also explained to the computer users that they can't trust everything that they see online or receive in their inbox.
7. Anna Kournikova virus
The Anna Kournikova virus spreaded like wildfire which distributed emails promising a compromising picture of the tennis star. This proved how sex sells social engineering.
8. Code Red
In 2001, Code Red infected Web servers, where it automatically spread by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft IIS servers, says Lovet.
Within a week's span, around 400,000 servers were infected with their homepagesaying 'Hacked By Chinese!'
Lovet notes that Code Red had a distinguishing feature designed to flood the White House Website with traffic from the infected servers, probably making it the first case of documented hacktivism on a large scale.
9. SQLslammer
SQL Slammer came into existance in 2003. The worm infected about every vulnerable system within 15 minutes. While it caused denial of service on some hosts it dramatically slowed down general Internet traffic. It infected almost 75,000 victims within ten minutes. The basis of the worm was demonstrated at the Black Hat Briefings by David Litchfield.
10. Sasser
Lovet says, in 2004, Sasser malware exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows to propagate, which made it particularly virulent. What’s more, due to a bug in the worm’s code, infected systems turned off every couple of minutes.
Around one million systems were infected. It also interrupted AFP’s communications satellites for hours, the Delta Airlines were required to cancel flights, the British coast guard did reprinting of maps and a hospital had to redirect its emergency room because its radiology department was completely paralyzed by the virus. The damage amount was estimated to be more than $18 billion.
A $250,000 bounty was placed by Microsoft placed on the author’s head, who turned out to be an 18-year old German student.
11. Mytob
One of first pieces of malware to combine the features of a bot and a mass-mailer, 2005's MyTob marked the beginning of the era of botnets and of cybercrime, says Lovet.
With this the business model of legitimized botnet started which included installation of spyware, dispersal of spam, illegal content hosting, interception of banking credentials, blackmail, etc.
The revenue generated from botnets which effect around 20 million machines estimated to be several billion dollars per year.
12. Storm botnet
By 2007, Lovet notes cybercriminals already had lucrative business models in place. Before then, however, botnets were fairly fragile: By neutralizing its unique Control Center, a botnet could be completely neutralized, because the bots no longer had anyone to report to or take commands from.
He says, by implementing a peer-to-peer architecture, Storm became the first botnet with decentralized command.
Storm managed to infect around 1 and 50 million systems and accounted for 8 percent of all malware running in the world.
13. Koobface
Koobface the anagram for Facebook came in limelight in 2008.
"It spread by pretending to be the infected user on social networks, prompting friends to download an update to their Flash player in order to view a video. The update is a copy of the virus," explains Lovet.
14. Zeus botnet
Chris Larsen, Malware Lab Architect for Blue Coat Systems, points to Zeus, first discovered in 2007, as the "king of the botnet kits."
This malware platform was used to create a Trojan horse that stole banking information with man-in-the-browser keystroke logging and form grabbing. The malware was spread mainly via drive-by downloads and phishing schemes.
15. Ikee
At a time when many people hadn't even heard of 'jailbreaking' a mobile device, Ikee threat showed up in 2009.
Ikee affected Apple's iPhone. Although the threat was rather harmless in payload, but it caught people's attention showed the world that even mobile devices are computers and must be protected from cyber threats just like any other computer and flies. It also obtained that wherever you have a popular operating system, malware will follow.
16. Operation Aurora
According to researchers at Kaspersky Lab, Operation Aurora was a cyber attack which began in mid-2009 and lasted through December 2009. Aurora gave birth to the concept of advanced persistent threats. The attack was publicly disclosed first by Google on January 12, 2010 in a blog post. Originated in China the attacks hit more than 30 organizations in the U.S.
Advanced techniques were used stay undetected for long surations while stealing valuable information, including source code and intellectual property.
17. Flashback
The Flashback Trojan was first discovered in 2011. It mostly affected computers running Mac OS X and using a security flaw in Java.
Blue Coat's Larsen notes Flashback is a "wake-up call for Mac users; no one should be feeling smug and safe these days."
18. Flame malware
"According to most threat researchers today, only governments have the necessary resources to design and implement a virus of such complexity," says Lovet of Flame and similar types of cyberespionage attacks.
Flame largely aimed on computers in the Middle East. In an Analysis conducted in 2012 which included the servers used to control the Flame malware it was found that several other related types of malware were existing, including some with direct connection to Stuxnet (worm believed to be created by the United States and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.)
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