The style and purpose of viruses runs the gamut. Following is a small sampling of viruses around the turn of the century. See
Sophos and
virus.
Love Letter
The fastest spreading virus in history appears to have been written by a resident of Manila in the Philippines. Sent via email in May 2000 with "I LOVE YOU" in the subject field, it replicated itself to everyone in the user's Outlook address book and then destroyed local files. Love Letter forced numerous organizations to shut down their email systems, as computer users were far too willing to let love into their lives.
CIH (a.k.a. Chernobyl)
This virus, written by Taiwanese student Chen Ing-Hau, triggers on the anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown. The virus attacks the BIOS chip on the computer, effectively paralyzing your entire PC.
Melissa
David L. Smith, 31, named his virus after a stripper he knew in Florida. His virus created chaos in March 1999 when it spread around the world in a day, clogging up email systems and inserting quotes from Bart Simpson into documents. Smith admitted causing over $80 million worth of damage to North American businesses.
Nimda
Meaning "admin" spelled backwards and launched in September 2001, this denial-of-service worm flooded hard disks on more than a million clients and servers on the Internet. Perhaps the most complex virus ever created, it used various flaws in Microsoft's Web server and browser software to unleash itself without the user's knowledge. See
Nimda.
911
No relation to 9/11 in New York because it was unleashed two years prior to 2001. It repeatedly dialed the emergency services phone number and spread through Word documents.
Kylie
In the late 1990s, the Kylie Minogue virus was fortunately rarely encountered, but played the Australian pop star's song "Never too late" through the PC's speaker.
SMEG
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast! Unfortunately, most of your data won't!" The Simulated Metamorphic Encryption Generator viruses, written by the Black Baron, trashed hard disks up and down the country in the mid-1990s. The author, Christopher Pile, was a fan of the Red Dwarf series and ended up being sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Moruroa
This boot-sector virus in the mid-1990s displayed a message protesting the French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Coffeeshop
Developed in 2000 by the Trident virus writing gang based in the Netherlands, the non-destructive Coffeeshop virus displayed a large cannabis leaf on the screen of a Windows PC urging the legalization of marijuana.
Casino
In 1999, Casino was written on the island of Malta. It corrupted files in gambling software.