20 notorious worms, viruses and botnets

The earliest worms and viruses were created for geeky fun and did little harm - oh, how times have changed. Here are 20 worms, viruses and botnets that show the evolution of malware, from Creeper to Flame.

By Joan Goodchild, CSO | Security, botnets, malware

Michelangelo

The dormant Michelangelo virus was designed to awaken in 1991 on March 6^th,the birthday of Renaissance artist Michelangelo, and erase critical parts of infected computers’ hard drives, says Lovet.

"The promises of destruction it carried spawned a media frenzy. In the weeks preceding March 6th, media relayed, and some may say amplified, experts’ predictions forecasting 5 million computers going definitively down. Yet, on March 6^th, only a few thousand data losses were reported – and public trust in AV companies’ ethics was tainted for a while."