Comparison of computer viruses

Not to be confused with Timeline of computer viruses and worms.

The compilation of a unified list of computer viruses is made difficult because of naming. To aid the fight against computer viruses and other types of malicious software, many security advisory organizations and developers of anti-virus software compile and publish lists of viruses. When a new virus appears, the rush begins to identify and understand it as well as develop appropriate counter-measures to stop its propagation. Along the way, a name is attached to the virus. As the developers of anti-virus software compete partly based on how quickly they react to the new threat, they usually study and name the viruses independently. By the time the virus is identified, many names denote the same virus.

Another source of ambiguity in names is that sometimes a virus initially identified as a completely new virus is found to be a variation of an earlier known virus, in which cases, it is often renamed. For example, the second variation of the Sobig worm was initially called "Palyh" but later renamed "Sobig.b". Again, depending on how quickly this happens, the old name may persist.

Scope

In terms of scope, there are two major variants: the list of "in-the-wild" viruses, which list viruses in active circulation, and lists of all known viruses, which also contain viruses believed not to be in active circulation (also called "zoo viruses"). The sizes are vastly different, in-the-wild lists contain a hundred viruses but full lists contain tens of thousands.

Comparison of viruses and related programs

Virus	Alias(es)	Types	Subtype	Isolation Date	Isolation	Origin	Author	Notes
1260	V2Px	DOS	Polymorphic	1990				First virus to use polymorphic encryption
4K	4096	DOS		1990-01				The first virus to use stealth
5lo		DOS		1992-10				Infects .EXE files only
A and A	A_and_A	DOS, Windows 95, 98		1993
Abraxas	Abraxas5	DOS, Windows 95, 98		1993-04	Europe		ARCV group	Infects COM file. Disk directory listing will be set to the system date and time when infection occurred.
Acid	Acid.670, Acid.670a, Avatar.Acid.670, Keeper.Acid.670	DOS, Windows 95, 98		1992			Corp-$MZU	Infects COM file. Disk directory listing will not be altered.
Acme		DOS, Windows 95 DOS						Upon executing infected EXE, this infects another EXE in current directory by making a hidden COM file with same base name.
ABC	ABC-2378, ABC.2378, ABC.2905	DOS		1992-10				ABC causes keystrokes on the compromised machine to be repeated.
Actifed		DOS
Ada		DOS		1991-10		Argentina		The Ada virus mainly targets .COM files, specifically COMMAND.COM.
Agena	Agena.723	DOS		1992-09	Spain			Infected programs will have a file length increase of 723 to 738 bytes
AGI-Plan	Month 4-6	DOS			Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany			AGI-Plan is notable for reappearing in South Africa in what appeared to be an intentional re-release.
Ah	David-1173, Tuesday	MS-DOS		1991-05	Italy			Systems infected with Ah will experience frequent system hangs.
AI		DOS
AIDS	AIDSB, Hahaha, Taunt	DOS		1990			Dr. Joseph Popp	AIDS is the first virus known to exploit the DOS "corresponding file" vulnerability.
AIDS II
AirCop	Air cop-B, Red State	DOS		1990-01				Infects the boot sector of floppy disks.
Alabama	Alabama.B	DOS		1989-10		Hebrew University, Jerusalem		Files infected by Alabama increase in size by 1,560 bytes.
Alcon	RSY, Kendesm, Ken&Desmond, Ether	DOS		1997-12				Overwrites random information on disk causing damage over time.
Ambulance
Anna Kournikova		E-Mail VBScript		2001-02-11		Sneek, Netherlands	Jan de Wit	A Dutch court stated that US$166,000 in damages was caused by the worm.
AntiCMOS								Due to a bug in the virus code, the virus fails to erase CMOS information as intended.
ARCV-n		DOS		1992-10/1992-11		England, United Kingdom	ARCV Group	ARCV-n is a term for a large family of viruses written by the ARCV group.
Bomber	CommanderBomber	DOS				Bulgaria		Polymorphic virus which infects systems by inserting fragments of its code randomly into executable files.
Brain	Pakistani flu			1986-01		Lahore, Pakistan	Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi	Considered to be the first computer virus for the PC
Byte Bandit		Amiga, bootsector virus		1988-01			Swiss Cracking Association	It was one of the most feared Amiga viruses until the infamous Lamer Exterminator.
Christmas Tree
CIH	Chernobyl, Spacefiller	Windows 95, 98, Me		1998-06	Taiwan	Taiwan	Chen ing-Hau	Activates on April 26, in which it destroys partition tables, and tries to overwrite the BIOS.
Commwarrior		Symbian Bluetooth worm						Famous for being the first worm to spread via MMS and Bluetooth.
Creeper		TENEX operating system		1971			Bob Thomas	An experimental self-replicating program which gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system.
Eliza		DOS		1991-12
Elk Cloner		Apple II		1982	Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, United States	Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, United States	Rich Skrenta	The first virus observed "in the wild"
Form		DOS		1990	Switzerland			A very common boot virus, triggers on the 18th of any month.
Graybird	Graybird P
Hare		DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98		1996-08				Famous for press coverage which blew its destructiveness out of proportion
ILOVEYOU				2000-05-05		Manila, Philippines	Michael Buen, Onel de Guzman	Computer worm that attacked tens of millions of Windows personal computers
INIT 1984		Mac OS		1992-03-13				Malicious, triggered on Friday the 13th.
Jerusalem		DOS		1987-10				Jerusalem was initially very common and spawned a large number of variants.
Kama Sutra	Blackworm, Nyxem, and Blackmal			2006-01-16				Designed to destroy common files such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Koko		DOS		1991-03				The payload of this virus activates on July 29 and February 15 and may erase data on the users hard drive
Lamer Exterminator		Amiga, Boot sector virus		1989-10		Germany		Random encryption, fills random sector with "LAMER"
MacMag	Drew, Bradow, Aldus, Peace			1987-12
MDEF	Garfield, Top Cat			1990-05
Melissa	Mailissa, Simpsons, Kwyjibo, Kwejeebo	Microsoft Word macro virus		1999-03-26		New Jersey, United States	David L. Smith	Part macro virus and part worm. Melissa, a MS Word-based macro that replicates itself through e-mail.
Michelangelo		DOS		1991-02-04	Australia			Ran March 6 (Michelangelo's birthday)
Navidad				2000-12
Natas		Multipartite, stealth, polymorphic		1994			"Priest"
nVIR	MODM, nCAM, nFLU, kOOL, Hpat, Jude	Mac OS		1987				nVIR has been known to 'hybridize' with different variants of nVIR on the same machine.
OneHalf	Slovak Bomber, Freelove or Explosion-II	DOS		1994		Slovakia	Vyvojar	It is also known as one of the first viruses to implement a technique of "patchy infection"
Ontario.1024
Ontario.2048
Ontario	SBC	DOS		1990-07		Ontario, Canada	"Death Angel"
Pikachu virus				2000-06-28		Asia		The Pikachu virus is believed to be the first computer virus geared at children.
Ping-pong	Boot, Bouncing Ball, Bouncing Dot, Italian, Italian-A, VeraCruz	Boot sector virus						Harmless to most computers
RavMonE.exe	RJump.A, Rajump, Jisx	Worm		2006-06-20				Once distributed in Apple iPods, but a Windows-only virus
SCA		Amiga, Boot sector virus		1987-11		Switzerland	Swiss Cracking Association	Puts a message on screen. Harmless except it might destroy a legitimate non-standard boot block.
Scores	Eric, Vult, NASA, San Jose Flu	Mac OS		1988 Spring				Designed to attack two specific applications which were never released.
Scott's Valley		DOS		1990-09	Scotts Valley, California, United States			Infected files will contain the seemingly meaningless hex string 5E8BDE909081C63200B912082E.
SevenDust	666, MDEF, 9806, Graphics Accelerator, SevenD	Mac OS		1998
Shankar's Virus	W97M.Marker.o	Polymorphic		1999-06-03			Sam Rogers	Infects Word Documents
Simile	Etap, MetaPHOR	Windows	Polymorphic				The Mental Driller	The metamorphic code accounts for around 90% of the virus' code
SMEG engine		DOS	Polymorphic	1994		United Kingdom	The Black Baron	Two viruses were created using the engine: Pathogen and Queeg.
Stoned				1987	Wellington, New Zealand			One of the earliest and most prevalent boot sector viruses
Sunday		DOS	Jerusalem.Sunday	1989-11	Seattle, Washington, United States			Because of an error in coding, the virus fails to execute its payload.
TDL-4		Botnet					JD virus
Techno		DOS						The virus plays a tune that was created by the author of the virus
Whale		DOS	Polymorphic	1990-07-01		Hamburg, Germany	R Homer	At 9216 bytes, was for its time the largest virus ever discovered.
ZMist	ZMistfall, Zombie.Mistfall	Zombie.Mistfall					Z0mbie	It was the first virus to use a technique known as "code integration".

Related lists

• List of computer worms
• Timeline of computer viruses and worms

Unusual subtypes

• Palm OS Viruses
• Linux malware

Notable instances

• Conficker
• Creeper virus - The first malware that ran on ARPANET
• ILOVEYOU
• Leap - Mac OS X Trojan horse
• Storm Worm - A Windows trojan horse that forms the Storm botnet

Similar software

• Adware
• Malware
• Spamming
• Spyware
• Computer worm
• Trojan horse

Security topics

• Antivirus software
• Computer insecurity
• Cryptovirology
• Security through obscurity

See also

• Computer worm
• Spyware
• Virus hoax
• Zombie computer

External links

• The WildList, by WildList Organization International
• List of Computer Viruses - listing of the Latest Viruses by Symantec.
• List of all viruses All viruses cataloged in Panda Security’s Collective Intelligence servers.