Phoning it In

Not all computer viruses focus on computers. Some target other electronic devices. Here's just a small sample of some highly portable viruses:

ñ CommWarrior attacked smartphones running the Symbian operating system (OS).

ñ The Skulls Virus also attacked Symbian phones and displayed screens of skulls instead of a home page on the victims' phones.

ñ RavMonE.exe is a virus that could infect iPod MP3 devices made between Sept. 12, 2006, and Oct. 18, 2006.

ñ Fox News reported in March 2008 that some electronic gadgets leave the factory with viruses pre-installed -- these viruses attack your computer when you sync the device with your machine [source: Fox News].

Next, we'll take a look at a virus that affected major networks, including airline computers and bank ATMs.

Worst Computer Virus 5: SQL Slammer/Sapphire

In late January 2003, a new Web server virus spread across theInternet. Many computer networks were unprepared for the attack, and as a result the virus brought down several important systems. The Bank of America's ATM service crashed, the city of Seattle suffered outages in 911 service and Continental Airlines had to cancel several flights due to electronic ticketing and check-in errors.

The culprit was the SQL Slammer virus, also known as Sapphire. By some estimates, the virus caused more than $1 billion in damages before patches and antivirus software caught up to the problem [source: Lemos]. The progress of Slammer's attack is well documented. Only a few minutes after infecting its first Internet server, the Slammer virus was doubling its number of victims every few seconds. Fifteen minutes after its first attack, the Slammer virus infected nearly half of the servers that act as the pillars of the Internet [source: Boutin].

The Slammer virus taught a valuable lesson: It's not enough to make sure you have the latest patches and antivirus software. Hackers will always look for a way to exploit any weakness, particularly if the vulnerability isn't widely known. While it's still important to try and head off viruses before they hit you, it's also important to have a worst-case-scenario plan to fall back on should disaster strike.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 795