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Concept
Comparison of computer viruses
Summary
The compilation of a unified list of computer viruses is made difficult because of naming. To aid the fight against computer viruses and other types of malicious software, many security advisory organizations and developers of anti-virus software compile and publish lists of viruses. When a new virus appears, the rush begins to identify and understand it as well as develop appropriate counter-measures to stop its propagation. Along the way, a name is attached to the virus. As the developers of anti-virus software compete partly based on how quickly they react to the new threat, they usually study and name the viruses independently. By the time the virus is identified, many names denote the same virus.
Another source of ambiguity in names is that sometimes a virus initially identified as a completely new virus is found to be a variation of an earlier known virus, in which cases, it is often renamed. For example, the second variation of the Sobig worm was initially called "Palyh" but later renamed "Sobig.b". Again, depending on how quickly this happens, the old name may persist.
In terms of scope, there are two major variants: the list of "in-the-wild" viruses, which list viruses in active circulation, and lists of all known viruses, which also contain viruses believed not to be in active circulation (also called "zoo viruses"). The sizes are vastly different: in-the-wild lists contain a hundred viruses but full lists contain tens of thousands.
{|class="wikitable sortable" border="1"
!Virus
!Alias(es)
!Types
!Subtype
!Isolation Date
!Isolation
!Origin
!Author
!Notes
|-
|1260
|V2Px
|DOS
|Polymorphic
|1990
|
|
|
|First virus family to use polymorphic encryption
|-
|4K
|4096
|DOS
|
|1990-01
|
|
|
|The first known MS-DOS-file-infector to use stealth
|-
|5lo
|
|DOS
|
|1992-10
|
|
|
|Infects .EXE files only
|-
|Abraxas
|Abraxas5
|DOS,Windows 95, 98
|
|1993-04
|Europe
|
|ARCV group
|Infects . Disk directory listing will be set to the system date and time when infection occurred.
|-
|Acid
|Acid.670, Acid.670a, Avatar.Acid.
Official source
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Related concepts (6)
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Conficker, also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido, is a computer worm targeting the Microsoft Windows operating system that was first detected in November 2008. It uses flaws in Windows OS software and dictionary attacks on administrator passwords to propagate while forming a botnet, and has been unusually difficult to counter because of its combined use of many advanced malware techniques. The Conficker worm infected millions of computers including government, business and home computers in over 190 countries, making it the largest known computer worm infection since the 2003 SQL Slammer worm.
Storm botnet
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Timeline of computer viruses and worms
This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events. John von Neumann's article on the "Theory of self-reproducing automata" is published in 1966. The article is based on lectures given by von Neumann at the University of Illinois about the "Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata" in 1949. The first story written about a computer virus is The Scarred Man by Gregory Benford.