Timeline of computer viruses and worms

This is a list of noteworthy computer viruses and worms.

2005

• August 16th: The Zotob Worm and several variations of malware exploiting the vulnerability described in MS05-039 are discovered. The effect was overblown because several United States media outlets were infected.

2004

• May 1st: The Sasser worm emerges by exploiting a vulnerability in LSASS described in MS04-011 and causes problems in networks, even interrupting business in some cases.
• March 19th: The Witty worm is a record breaking worm in many regards. It exploited holes in several Internet Security Systems (ISS) products. It was the fastest disclosure to worm, it was the first internet worm to carry a destructive payload and it spread rapidly using a pre-populated list of ground-zero hosts.
• Late January: MyDoom emerges, and currently holds the record for the fastest-spreading mass mailer worm.

2003

• October 24th: The Sober worm is first seen and maintains its presence until 2005 with many new variants.

The simultaneous attack of the Blaster and Sobig worms caused a massive amount of damage.

• August 19th: The Sobig worm (technically the Sobig.F worm) spread rapidly via mail and network shares.
• August 18th: The Welchia (Nachi) worm is discovered. The worm tries to remove the blaster worm and patching Windows.
• August 12th: The Blaster worm also know as the Lovesan worm spread rapidly by exploiting Microsoft Windows computers vulnerable to exploits first described in MS03-026 and later in MS03-039.
• January 24th: The SQL slammer worm also known as the Sapphire worm, attacked vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE described in MS02-039 and MS02-061, causes widespread problems on the Internet.

2001

• October 26th: The Klez worm is first identified.
• September 18th: The Nimda worm is discovered and spreads through a variety of means including vulnerabilities described in MS01-044 and backdoors left by Code Red II and Sadmind.
• August 4th: A complete re-write of the Code Red worm, Code Red II begins aggresivley spreading, primarily in China.
• July 13th: The Code Red worm attacking the Index Server ISAPI Extension in Microsoft's Internet Information Services with a vulnerability described in MS01-033, is released.
• July: The Sircam worm is released, spreading through e-mails and unprotected network shares.
• May 8th: The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Microsystem's Solaris (Security Bulletin 00191)and Microsoft's Internet Information Services (MS00-078).
• January: A worm strikingly similar to the Morris worm, named the Raman worm infected only Red Hat Linux machines running version 6.2 and 7, using three vulnerabilities in wu-ftpd, rpc-statd and lpd respectively.

2000

• May: The VBS/Loveletter worm, also known as the "I love you" virus appeared. As of 2004, this was the most costly virus to business, causing upwards of 10 billion dollars in damage.

1999

• March 26th: The Melissa worm is released, targeting Microsoft Word and Outlook-based systems, and creating considerable network traffic.

1998

• June 2nd: The first version of the CIH virus appears.

1995

• The "Concept virus" the first Macro virus is created

1992

• Michelangelo (virus) is bound to create a digital armageddon on 6th of march, with millions of computes that will get their information wiped. All according to a mass media pushed hystery.

1989

• October 1989: Ghostball First multipartite virus discovered by Fridrik Skulason

1988

• November 2nd: The Morris worm, created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and SUN machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet, and becomes the first worm to spread extensively "in the wild", and one of the first well known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1987

• (c)Brain, the first virus written for IBM PC compatibles, emerges.
• October: The Jerusalem (virus) is found in the town of Jerusalem. It is a destructive virus programmed to destroy files on every occation of friday the 13th.
• November: The SCA virus, a boot sector virus for Amigas appears, immediately creating a pandemic virus-writer storm. A short time later, SCA releases another, considerably more destructive virus, the Byte Bandit.

1982

• A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems, is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild"—that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created.