The Worst Computer Virus

We’ve all learned to fear computer viruses. You probably get emails all the time warning about this computer virus or that.  A computer virus can crash your system, temporarily or permanently, can reveal private information to others, and can even steal your email addresses and crash your friends’ systems in your names. This is all bad, to be sure, but how bad can it get? What was the worst computer virus ever?

Worst Computer Virus Candidates

Unfortunately, since the advent of the Internet, there has been a bit of an arms race when it comes to computer viruses. Like a live virus, computer viruses (and their creators) adapt to whatever measures have been designed to defeat it. As a result, we’ve seen a number of pretty serious computer viruses over the years. Here are some candidates for the title of worst computer virus ever.

Melissa

The Melissa virus, which plagued computers in 1999, was at the time considered the worst virus ever, mostly because it was so insidious. Today, the idea of sending a virus through email is commonplace, but at the time, no one realized it could be done, hence, when people received an email message saying something to the effect of “here is that document you asked for,” thousands upon thousands of unsuspecting users downloaded it. Every single download resulted in the virus replicating and sending itself to 50 other email addresses, and email traffic was jammed to a standstill.

ILOVEYOU

Probably the best known computer virus is the ILOVEYOU virus. ILOVEYOU, which came to us in 2000 from the Philippines, was a worm, meaning it was self-replicating. ILOVEYOU, which was disguised as a love letter text file, added new files to the registry, replaced certain files with itself and executed a password-stealing application. It is estimated that the ILOVEYOU virus did over ten billion dollars worth of damage.

The Worst Computer Virus Ever

These viruses are bad, but many people think the worst computer virus ever to date was the Storm Worm. Not to be confused with the 2001 W32 Storm Worm, The Storm Worm that surfaced in 2006 is a Trojan horse virus that can be activated just by clicking on an email link that looks like a link to a video or a news story. Once in your computer, it can actually allow a remote user to take over your machine and send spam or perform other malicious tasks.

Dealing with Computer Viruses

A computer virus doesn’t have to be the worst computer virus ever to cause you all sorts of problems. That’s why it’s a great idea for you to have the right anti virus protection. Choose an anti virus anti spam program that catches threats before they even get into your computer. You’ll need software that is designed to recognize and isolate new threats as well as old ones.