Decades ago, computer viruses were developed by some youngsters competed for recognition and bragging rights. But now, hackers are getting more professional and they have more dangerous ambitions. Instead of working from their parents’ PC, virus coders are now often parts of underworld criminal gangs. These are ten most destructive computer viruses to date:
10. CIH – $80 Million
CIH or Spacefiller or Chernobyl was among the most damaging Windows-based virus and it first emerged in 1998. It was developed by a Taiwanese student and infected more than 60 million machines. CIH spreads with standard executable files in Windows 95, 98 and ME. CIH doesn’t spread on Windows NT-based OS such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
It has a particularly lethal payload with the ability to overwrite the first 1Mb of hard drive with zero; effectively deleting the partition table. It can also overwrite Flash BIOS, rendering many motherboards unusable.