What Are Top 5 Viruses that are Dangerous for your PC?

Computer viruses are analogous to biological viruses, the likes of which our current generation is thoroughly well versed with. It hinders you, or in this case, your computer from functioning normally and is not as easy to get rid of. Just like pandemics are not a new phenomenon, computer viruses have been around since the 1970s.

These viruses can steal the user’s information and infect the regular functioning of your device or stop it altogether. A virus is notorious for cloning itself. Similarly, computer viruses replicate aggressively and spread from device to device.

Getting a computer virus is not uncommon. It has happened to the best of us. The degree of danger varies with the type of computer virus that has affected our system. Some viruses pose no lasting threats and just cause mild discomfort to their users; however, the following computer viruses have had a catastrophic consequence estimating losses in billions of dollars and are a few of the most dangerous cyber viruses to have ever existed.

You always need to vary and remove any kind of viruses that may show up, like removing the fuq.com virus. Do it! It is just one of the dangerous viruses out there.

Check out what are top 5 viruses that are dangerous for your PC as listed below:

1. Mydoom –

First surfacing on 26^th January 2004, Mydoom spread exponentially via email using phony email ids with generic names and even more generic subject lines like “hi” and “click me, baby, one more time,” tricking the users into opening the attachment following which the process would keep repeating itself.

Via this process, the virus slowed the overall internet performance by approximately 10 percent and increased the loading time on web pages by 50 percent, all in one day. The virus created a backdoor in the victim’s computer system, and even after it spread, the backdoors that were created remained open.

On 1^st February 2004, over one million infected computers initiated a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against companies like SCO group, Microsoft, and Google. A $250,000 reward was offered to catch the creator(s) of the virus; however, to this day, they haven’t been caught. It is known that the virus orientates from Russia and is written in C++.

Mydoom is said to be the worst computer virus outbreak in history, causing damage over $38 billion. Still, when adjusting the inflation cost, the actual damage is estimated at around $52.2 billion. Mydoom was responsible for a quarter of all emails sent globally, and it is active to this day, still circulating phishing emails.

Craig Shmugar, an employee at McAfee, a computer security firm, named this virus Mydoom after noticing “mydom” in the programming code and realising the impact of this virus would be devastating and hence having “doom” in the name was imperative.

2. Sobig –

The Sobig virus originating in 2003 was almost as cataclysmic as the Mydoom virus causing damage worth $30 billion worldwide. Similar to mutations and variants of biological viruses, the Sobig virus had various versions of Sobig. A, Sobig. B, Sobig. C, Sobig.D, Sobig. E, but the most popular variant was Sobig.F.

It infected millions of Microsoft Windows computers that had access to the internet via email, much like Mydoom; however, it was also a Trojan horse in the sense that it would masquerade itself to not appear as malware instead appear as legitimate computer software. The way the Sobig virus spread and replicated itself relentless is akin to that of Mydoom. A $250,000 reward was offered to catch this virus’s creator(s), but they remain unknown to this day.

3. Klez –

Just like Sobig and Mydoom, Klez is a computer worm that spread via emails. Various variants of this worm came into existence, with each version more deadly than its predecessor. The first variant appeared in October 2001. It infected Microsoft Windows systems and Outlook.

The e-mail included bogus subject lines, a text portion, and various attachments, which claimed to be the antidote to the Klez bug. As a result, people would be deceived into opening such attachments, and the worm would do its nasty job. The bug would gain access to contacts from the device it already corrupted and send itself, thereby replicating itself.

4. I Love You –

Originating in the Philippines, the ILOVEYOU virus was first observed on 5^th May 2000. The effects of this virus were so drastic that large corporations and government agencies went offline with their mailing system to curb the spread and prevent further infection.

The estimated damages were around $15 billion worldwide. The virus was designed by a Filipino college student named Onel de Guzman, who was unaware of the ambit of his creation and just wanted to steal passwords to access paid services online for free. This virus came to be known as Loveletter.

5. WannaCry –

WannaCry was a worldwide ransomware cyberattack in May 2017 which targeted Microsoft Windows operating system by holding your data hostage, encrypting it, and demanding ransom payments in Bitcoins. Unlike all other viruses on our list, WannaCry propagated through EternalBlue; a cyber exploit developed by National Security Agency (NSA).

A year before the WannaCry ransomware attack, EternalBlue was stolen and leaked by the Shadow Broker hacker group. Luckily, a kill switch was discovered by Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old security researcher from the United Kingdom, putting an end to the spread of this attack. Over 200,000 computers were affected by this attack, and the estimated damages for over 150 countries amounted to $4 billion. North Korea and the agencies working for the country were blamed for the attack.

Such dangerous viruses only reiterate why cybersecurity is a necessity. The ongoing pandemic has increased our dependency on modern-day technology, and taking preventative actions has become imperative. Keep a lookout for continuous crashes of your computer, random loss of data, and overall slower performance of your computer as these are common symptoms of a computer virus.