CryptoLocker When it comes to malware, ransomware is the new kid on the block. While most people can rattle off names like ‘Trojan’, ‘viruses’, and ‘spyware’, they’re often not too familiar with ransomware. Ransomware is a kind of malware that takes your files hostage. Video converter for mac. You know in heist movies when the bad guy grabs someone and threatens them in return for money?

Ransomware works much like that, except your computer is taken hostage by a faceless bad guy. Released in September 2013, CryptoLocker spread through email attachments and encrypted the user’s files so that they couldn’t access them. The hackers then, usually somewhere from a few hundred pounds up to a couple of grand.

F-Secure has reported on a new, scarier-than-usual Mac Trojan horse. The good news is that you can only get infected if you double-click on a rogue file masquerading as a Flash installer.

With some of the hacking attempts, System Restore or recovery software worked. Although with many of the infected computers, if the victims didn’t pay up they’d lose all their files. Now is a good time to remind you to always back your files up! In June 2014, Operation Tovar took down Evgeniy Bogachev, the leader of the gang of hackers behind CryptoLocker. In February, the for Bogachev. Cost of the malware: With 500,000 victims,.

ILOVEYOU While ILOVEYOU sounds like a cheerful bon mot you might find printed on the inside of a Valentine’s Day card, it’s actually far, far more sinister than that. ILOVEYOU is one of the most well-known and destructive viruses of all time. It’s been 15 years since ILOVEYOU was let loose on the internet. By today’s standards it’s a pretty tame virus, but in 2000 it was the most damaging malware event of all time. Likely, ILOVEYOU inspired many hackers to wield their keyboard as a weapon.

But why was it so brutal? Source: Shutterstock Well, in 2000 malware was a bit of a myth.

In fact, it was such a myth that malware could get away with being completely unsubtle. If you got an email today like the one that was sent around in 2000, you’d never open it.

(We hope!) The virus came in an email with a subject line that said “I love you”. Being curious types, people clicked into the email with aplomb—regardless of the fact the email wasn’t from anyone they knew. The malware was a worm that was downloaded by clicking on an attachment called ‘LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs’. ILOVEYOU overwrote system files and personal files and spread itself over and over and over again. ILOVEYOU around the world and still people clicked on the text—maybe to test if it really was as bad as it was supposed to be.

Poking the bear with a stick, to use a metaphor. ILOVEYOU was so effective it actually held the Guinness World Record as the most ‘virulent’ virus of all time. A viral virus, by all accounts. Two young Filipino programmers, Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman, were but because there were no laws against writing malware, their case was dropped and they went free.

Cost of the malware:. MyDoom MyDoom is considered to be the most damaging virus ever released—and with a name like MyDoom would you expect anything less? MyDoom, like ILOVEYOU, is a record-holder and was the fastest-spreading email-based worm ever. MyDoom was an odd one, as attack. 25% of infected hosts of the.A version of the virus allegedly hit the SCO website with a boatload of traffic in an attempt to crash its servers. As well as targeting tech companies, MyDoom spammed junk mail through infected computers, with the text that said “andy; I’m just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry”. Who was Andy?

In 2004, roughly somewhere between had been infected by MyDoom. Cost of the malware:.

Storm Worm Storm Worm was a particularly vicious virus that made the rounds in 2006 with a subject line of ‘230 dead as storm batters Europe’. Intrigued, people would open the email and click on a link to the news story and that’s when the problems started. Storm Worm was a Trojan horse that infected computers, sometimes turning them into zombies or bots to continue the spread of the virus and to send a huge amount of spam mail. Tip: never open a link in an email unless you know exactly what it is. By July 2007,. Cost of the malware: An exact cost is yet to be calculated.

Sasser & Netsky 17-year-old Sven Jaschan created Sasser & Netsky, two worms, in the early noughties. Sasser & Netsky are actually two separate worms, but they’re often grouped together because the similarities in the code led experts to believe they were created by the same person. Sasser spread through infected computers by scanning random IP addresses and instructing them to download the virus. Netsky was the more familiar email-based worm.