What was the worst malware your PC ever got?

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

What was the worst malware your PC ever got?

 

 

Mine was a several years ago on my Windows XP Compaq laptop where I inadvertently got a Trojan horse and it started denying access to things like Internet explorer, my security programs. This Trojan horse was very smart because, when I went to install Malwarebytes, it realized I was doing it and denied access.  I had to completely reinstall Windows XP in the end. 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Back in the early 1990s, I was working at an anti-virus software company and a colleague accidentally left a diskette infected with the then-new Tequila virus in my Packard Bell 286's floppy diskette drive.  I accidentally booted from it, and my PC was infected.  The colleague, who had just then left for the day, had to come in and write a disinfector for the virus and clean my PC.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[+Warwagon MVC]

The first and only one I have ever got was back the Windows 98 days, it added entries to my autoexec.bat that would count down from 10 to 1 during boot and then do nothing. Looking at the source in Notepad that's all it was. :laugh:

 

The source litterally was just

 

10

Pause

9

Pause

8

Pause

7

Pause

6

Pause

5

Pause

4

Pause

3

Pause

2

Pause

1

Pause

[Skyfrog]

I got a boot sector virus from a used 5.25" shareware games disk I bought at Cyber Exchange in 1996. 

 

Fortunately that's pretty much it.

[The Evil Overlord]

I once got some random infection using msn messenger back in the 2000's, someone posted a link and I clicked on it, luckily my iss stopped msn from resending it to all of my contacts and a scan got rid of it.

(the infection, not the messenger)

[Lord Method Man]

Back in the late 90s my little brother got on our family PC and installed BonziBuddy, CometCursor, and a bunch of other crap.

[The Evil Overlord]

Off topic, sorry

 

Just out of curiosity, have viruses, and other forms of malware evolved?

What can they do to infected computers now?

[Ishanx]

Back in the late 90s my little brother got on our family PC and installed BonziBuddy, CometCursor, and a bunch of other crap.

 

I had that too and I installed them myself. I was 9, maybe. I was so excited to see something that could talk to me haha

[fusi0n]

My mom 

[Max Norris]

In the past decade, probably dealing with that one malware called Sirefef on a friend's system who was careless with his download habits. Not impossible to remove, but persistent. Another friend gave me one of his Linux servers that had the Phalanx rootkit, this was back when Debian had that predictable SSL key problem, took a while to figure out what was going on with that one. Think the last one that really got me personally was in the early 90's, one of those old self-replicating viruses and was pretty clueless about how to deal with that sort of thing at the time.. had a lot of infected floppies, ugh.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Off topic, sorry

 

Just out of curiosity, have viruses, and other forms of malware evolved?

What can they do to infected computers now?

 

Mostly with vulnerabilities, in either Windows or 3rd party software such as Flash, Adobe reader and the worst of the worst Java. Also known as drive by downloads, commonly used in infected banner ads on completely legit websites, which is why

 

A) I sandbox all of my Internet Web Browsing on ALL my computers using Sandboxie

B) I block ads.

 

It goes down like this, A user has an out of date version of one or all of the above which has not been patched, they visit a site with an infected banner ad or a site with a vulnerability on it and BOOM, they are infected.

 

Below is how I explain it to my customers when they are using an out of date version of anything

 

I tell them this is what your security should look like

 

 

This is what your security currently looks like

 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

back in the Win ME days my dad managed to get one of the nasty viruses that disables antivirus and deletes most of the apps on your computer (he managed to get the same virus again somehow in the XP days pre SP1)

[_neutrino Veteran]

The worst, as in most difficult to get rid of has been those stupid Antivirus 2010 pro style virus's that are just all over the place and self replicating.

 

However the overall worst virus i have seen has been W97M/Melissa

 

I have never actually gotten any of these virus' but have cleaned them up for people.

 

The only virus i can ever remember getting, I got from a flash drive my dad gave me. And all it did was change the name of Internet Explorer and do a redirect from any page to some non profit website. cannot remember the name of it.

[spacer]

Origin. About 3 months ago.

[Shadrack]

Windows XP - Blaster Worm in 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_%28computer_worm%29)

 

Back in those days, a fresh install of Windows XP would get the virus within about 12 minutes of being connected to the Internet (just sitting there).  That's what forced Microsoft to put out Windows XP SP2 with an extra feature of a firewall.  Traditionally before then (and after that too), Service Packs did not contain new features.  They were only bug fixes.  The only other "service pack" that has new features was Windows 8.1.

[D!ABOL!C]

Windows XP - Blaster Worm in 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_%28computer_worm%29)

 

Back in those days, a fresh install of Windows XP would get the virus within about 12 minutes of being connected to the Internet (just sitting there).  That's what forced Microsoft to put out Windows XP SP2 with an extra feature of a firewall.  Traditionally before then (and after that too), Service Packs did not contain new features.  They were only bug fixes.  The only other "service pack" that has new features was Windows 8.1.

 

Oh how I remember. I always did a clean install of my OS before going back to College and after XP finished, I kept getting the forced shutdown. I did a second re-install and the same thing happened. So I went online on a second computer and read about it.

 

The best part was, the next week at College, when we hooked our machines to the network, we got to a landing page that said they had to update antivirus and install patches. Obviously no one did it and our network at school was shutdown for almost a week. Good memories.

[winrez]

The ripper virus, I downloaded some games off a local BBS.

 

(its the only virus I have ever had) not counting Google desktop installing after I installed Chrome for testing site compatibility.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Windows XP - Blaster Worm in 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_%28computer_worm%29)

 

Back in those days, a fresh install of Windows XP would get the virus within about 12 minutes of being connected to the Internet (just sitting there).  That's what forced Microsoft to put out Windows XP SP2 with an extra feature of a firewall.  Traditionally before then (and after that too), Service Packs did not contain new features.  They were only bug fixes.  The only other "service pack" that has new features was Windows 8.1.

I was just about to mention that worm. Man, I remember the headaches it gave me when I was 13 years old. It forced me to learn how to format my computer and install Windows by booting from the disc. I remember the same thing happening to my friend's computers.

[techbeck]

A user got Cryptolocker the other day at work....

 

http://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/10/cryptolocker-ransomware-what-you-need-to-know/

[Shadrack]

Oh how I remember. I always did a clean install of my OS before going back to College and after XP finished, I kept getting the forced shutdown. I did a second re-install and the same thing happened. So I went online on a second computer and read about it.

 

The best part was, the next week at College, when we hooked our machines to the network, we got to a landing page that said they had to update antivirus and install patches. Obviously no one did it and our network at school was shutdown for almost a week. Good memories.

 

 

I was just about to mention that worm. Man, I remember the headaches it gave me when I was 13 years old. It forced me to learn how to format my computer and install Windows by booting from the disc. I remember the same thing happening to my friend's computers.

 

I think the Blaster worm had to have been the most widespread Windows virus in its history.  It was devastating.  Our work network had to be taken offline as we fixed it (worked in IT then).  That was what made software firewalls a requirement from then on.

[cropcircles]

Good topic.  I really don't know the worst because it F up my system so bad I couldn't ever locate it. I went into complete BSOD and couldn't recover. Used Acronis True Image to recover a backup. The most annoying ones I've had are the one's that take control of your mouse and it drives you nuts.

[zoharzenica]

Metro...jk

 

Never got any.

[Hum]

One of those fake ransom-ware proggys on my XP desktop.

 

I was able to stop it with Task Manager, and do a Delete.

[Louisifer]

Blaster worm, from the good old days without a firewall :D

I also remember having notifications pop up as well on the desktop.. I was so glad when added firewall as default.

[ANON86364]

I don't recall getting any malware myself but the worst I've had to deal with is CryptoLocker. In most cases, unless you want to trust giving them your money, you're screwed without a backup.