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Top 10 Viruses

Learn more about the TOP 10 viruses.

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Always make sure you have an updated anti virus on Widnows, Mac OS X.

Even though users nowadays rely on anti-virus packages, firewalls, or security software suites to contain most of the latest virus outbreaks, there have been quite a number of malware that has reached global, pandemic levels of financial loss and information damage. All the same, here's a look at the top ten worst viruses, trojans, worms, and malware that has unleashed digital destruction of plague-like proportions.

1. Nimda: This combo-platter hacker program was the sum of all malware-based fears; i.e., it was a trojan, a virus, and a worm in one package. This nasty little hybrid was capable of infecting your computer in many different ways. It also managed to become the world's most prevalent virus at the time in less than an hour after it was unleashed online.

2. ILOVEYOU: Hands down, this was one of the most destructive malware ever created by man. Millions of computers were compromised and about the same amount of dollars were lost by this virus that hid behind an email and masqueraded as a love letter. This is the one virus that could claim to have shut down the computer networks of the Pentagon and CIA during its heyday.

3. Code Red: This is yet another highly widespread and damaging virus (which was, incidentally, named after a short-lived Mountain Dew variant) that has infected as many as three hundred sixty thousand computers in just one day. It's also the most difficult virus to remove in a system, because it can easily re-infect a machine that has just been cleaned. The amounts of resources and IT personnel time it ate up were also staggering.

4. Slammer: This malware has been described by experts as a tremendously quick-spreading computer worm that is capable of infecting the most exposed and vulnerable hosts within minutes of its deployment. This byte-sized malware terror was able to infect over seventy-five thousand machines worldwide after it was launched on January 25, 2003.

5. Blaster: Although it wasn't the most hazardous worm in the world because of its coding flaws, it was still one of the most hyped up and overexposed malware programs of all time because of the huge amounts of attention the media gave to it. An updated variant of this worm was created by an eighteen-year-old hacker named Jeffery Lee Parson, which quickly infected over fifty thousand machines worldwide.

6. Morris Worm: Robert Morris's 1988 Morris Worm was one of the very first worms ever made. It was quite an infamous achievement for malware created by a Cornell graduate student because it ultimately led to its creator's conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (Morris was the first man convicted under that act, in fact).

7. Welchia: This is believed to be one of the most peculiar worms in computer history because it was developed by a white hat hacker to actually clear out the ever-growing Blaster worm infection before deleting itself. In effect, it can be considered the first (and probably only) positive, non-malignant worm ever created.

8. Commwarrior-A: Experts believe this virus to be the next logical step in malware evolution. More to the point, the virus struck with impunity on the summer of 2005 in an area that was least expected: mobile phones. The first cellphone virus was only able to spread to sixty phones via text messages, but it could prove to be the start of a mobile device malware outbreak.

9. Elk Cloner: This was a relatively harmless floppy disk virus written in 1982 by a high school student. It specifically targeted Apple II computers and it merely caused affected machines to show a poem written by its maker on every fiftieth boot.

10. Creeper: Considered by many computer historians to be the first computer virus ever made, the Creeper was able to infect PDP-11 machines linked to ARPANET (the Defense-Department-made Internet predecessor). This self-replicating but benign (all it made the computer do was display the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!") virus was a precursor to today's inescapable malware epidemic.

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