Which are the most dangerous viruses ever created?
 

Hi all,
just wondering how far virus engineering has gone, does anybody know the most dangerous viruses ever created? I've once heard of a guy who created a virus which melted (!) your hard disk and other such stuff. If anybody knows, you'd really help me!
Thank you all!
:study:

Melted a hard drive? I doubt it.

Same here, but I guess it could erase your HD.

Yeah if it melted your hard drive, how would it run? And I guess hard drives has some kind of danger level where it turns the computer off or something. I suck at hardware problems.

I heard of a virus modelled after the aids virus- It works by attacking your computers immune system (anti-virus clients), and disabled it, but they were able to stop it apparantley, Worms are probably more dangerous than viruses.

I can think of a really good answer to this question, unfortunately it would probably resemble an essay more than a forum post :p

Lets see if I can keep this short.....


Dangerous in terms of (melting harddrives, which btw just isn't possible unless the drive was prone to melting all on its own anyway) is a hard thing to pin down. Viruses from the very early days have been able to do all sorts of nasty things to computers. Probably the single most nasty thing a virus could do would be to erase all the flash proms in your system it could find. Thus far its usually only the bios flash prom that gets hosed as programming device specific such erasers represents a whole nother level of complexity for the virus.

Now the problem with this definition of dangerous is that thus far these type of viruses have not in reality been very dangerous due to they're poor level of propogation.

The most common and seemingly the least harmfull viruses are the ones typically spread by outlook express and internet explorer. They are least harmfull in terms of what damage they actually do to a PC. In most cases amounts to little more than a few registry key changes and maybe an extra file or two on your computer trying to be as quiet as possible. But you could argue they are more dangerous than the previous example I gave because they seemingly propogate so well.

So now with those two things said, the most dangerous virus in the world would be the one that combines the two. Devastating PC destroyer coupled with highly mobile virus. The inherent problem here of course is how to ensure you propogate your code if your ultimate purpose is to destroy the machien you want to propogate your code. It seems to me we simply haven't seen such a beast yet, but there have been a few that came close, although seemingly for the most part by mistake.

I think a devastating virus would be one that spread very rapidly, clogging up the internet (didn't that happen before?) and catching everyone off guard. Viruses that destroy their hosts would probably not go very far (not to mention that there aren't very many ways to do so).

Windoze.

Windows isn't a virus.... Viruses are small and efficient. :D

should i do the "congradulations you've made rksprst laugh...." eh no :rolleyes: I'll stick to the "LOL"

That was REALLY FUNNY! :D

Edit:
I'm actually a little irritated that someone beat me to the punch with that! I had it all planned out too...:)

I think we need a laughing smiley...
;)

Heh. Good one.

My 2 cents: The most dangerous virus is the one you're not protected against, and damages your data

Is Windows a Virus?

No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do:

* They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that.

* Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that.

* Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too.

* Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too.

* Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too.

Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences:Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.

So Windows is not a virus.

It's a bug.

(Source: Annoyances.org)