could be transferred to servers under foreign control.” Though some anti-virus experts have disputed the contention that the virus was the creation of a foreign intelligence agency, its effect was to make cyber war a formal part of U.S. military strategy.
4) Zeus (2007) There is no shortage of malware kits that target personal information, but Zeus has become the go-to tool for many of today’s cyber criminals and is readily available for sale in the cyber crime underworld. It can be used to pilfer passwords as well as files, helping to create a literal underground economy for compromised identities that can be bought and sold for as little 50 cents. In the age of Internet banking and online shopping, a compromised identity is much more than just a name and social security number: it’s your address, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and even your secret security questions (your first pet, your favorite teacher, or your best friend from grade school).
5) PoisonIvy (2005) PoisonIvy is a computer security nightmare; it allows the attacker to secretly control the infected user’s computer. Malware like PoisonIvy is known as a “remote access trojan,” because it provides full control to the perpetrator through a backdoor. Once the virus is installed, the perpetrator can activate the controls of the targeted computer to record or manipulate its content or even use the computer’s speaker and webcam to record audio and video. Once thought of as a tool for amateur hackers, PoisonIvy has been used in sophisticated attacks against dozens of Western firms, including those involved in defense and chemical industries, according to a white paper written by Symantec, the computer security firm. The attacks were traced back to China.
6) MyDoom (2004) MyDoom muscled its way into the malware world in 2004, quickly infecting some one million computers and launching a massive distributed denial of service attack, which overwhelms a target by flooding it with information from multiple systems. The virus spread through email as what appeared to be a bounced message. When the unsuspecting victim opened the email, the malicious code downloaded itself and then pilfered the new victim’s Outlook address book. From there, it spread to the victim’s friends, family and colleagues. MyDoom spread faster than any worm seen prior.
7) Fizzer (2003) By 2003, many worms were spreading over e-mail, but Fizzer was an entirely new creature. If earlier worms, like Code Red (see below), were about mischief, Fizzer was all about money. While some initially dismissed the seriousness of the worm because it wasn’t as fast moving as Code Red, Fizzer was more insidious. “What makes Fizzer stand out is that it's the first instance of a worm created for financial gain,” says Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, an anti-virus company. “Computers infected with Fizzer started sending out pharmacy spam.” In other words, Fizzer didn’t just take over your address book to spread for the sake of spreading, it used your address book to send out the now familiar porn and pills spam. Fizzer was followed by better-known
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