10 most dangerous computer viruses in history

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A computer virus is a computer program which can copy itself and infect a computer. and it can scare the hell out of a computer user..:) We try so harder in this digital world to keep our computer healthy than ourselves...yet some geek can write some lines of codes sitting at his home and piss us off...:p There were some legendary viruses which are considered as the most dangerous viruses in the history. Today we are going to know which they are......

• Jerusalem 1987

This virus struck the world when people had hardly known the existence of computer viruses. This is the first MS-DOS virus that hat caused enormous destructions, affecting many countries, universities and companies worldwide.On Friday 13, 1988 it manged to infect no. of institutions in Europe, America and the Middle East.
You may be wondering, why the name 'Jerusalem'.That's because, 1st place to get affected by this virus was Jerusalem University.

• Morris (Internet Worm) - November 1988

This virus infected more than 6000 computers is US including NASA..!! It also manged to send millions of copies of itself to different network computers, being able to entirely paralyze all network resources.It used the errors in the operating systems to able to spread.It could also pick user passwords.
Believe it or not, the damages it caused were estimated to be $96 million..!!

• Solar Sunrise - 1998

This virus was worse than the last one. Hackers, using this virus, took over more than 500 computers which belonged to army, government and private sector of the United States..! Initially it was believed that the hackers were from Iraq, but later it was found that the hackers were two teenagers from California. The virus 'Solar Sunrise' was named after he popular vulnerabilities in computers that run on the operating system called Sun Solaris.

• Melissa - 1999

The name of the virus 'Melissa' comes from a lap dancer from Florida..! Confused..?... She was not the programmer but the programmer, David L. Smith from New Jersey was got acknowledged with the dancer.
Melisa virus also known as “Mailissa”, “Simpsons”, “Kwyjibo”, or “Kwejeebo”, is a mass-mailing macro virus. World came to know about Melissa,On March 26, 1999, when the virus shut down the internet mail system..!Melissa was hidden within a file called "List.DiC", which featured passwords that served as keys to unlocking 80 pornographic websites. The original form of the virus was sent through e-mail to different users.
It didn't end well for the creator of the virus, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000.

• I Love You - May 2000

This virus was similar to Melissa. It too sent usernames and passwords to users, just like Melissa.It managed to infect millions of computers around the world overnight.The virus started to spread when a user received an email with the subject “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs”. As soon as the file was opened, the virus managed to send its copy to every address present in the Windows Address Book.
Officials tracked the virus and found a young Philippino student was the hacker behind the virus. But he didn't face any charges as Philippines did not have any law that would prevent hacking and spreading malware. This lead to the creation of European Union's Global Cybercrime Treaty.

• The Code Red worm - July 2001
  

The 21st century virus caused damages worth $2 billion.....! Code Red was actually developed to use the power of all computers it infected against the official website of the White House at a predetermined date. However, White House managed to decode the code Red and stop it from happening.
The Code Red worm was first discovered and researched by eEye Digital Security employees Marc Maiffret and Ryan Permeh. The worm was named the .ida “Code Red” worm because Code Red Mountain Dew was what they were drinking at the time, and because of the phrase “Hacked by Chinese!” with which the worm defaced websites.

• Nimda - 2001

It affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide shortly after the 9/11 tragedy. Due to its 5 different methods of infecting computers systems and being able to duplicate itself, it is considered as one of the most complicated computer viruses.

• Downadup - 2009

Its the most dangerous virus till now, Downadup Worm . Its also called "Conficker". It has affected more than 6 millions of computers worldwidein just 3 days...!!.This malicious program was able to spread using a patched Windows flaw. Downadup was so "successful" in spreading across the Web, because it used a flaw that Microsoft patched in October in order to distantly compromise computers that ran unpatched versions of Microsoft's operating system.But the real power of the virus is, it makes the computer to download the destructive code from random drop point. According to the internet Security Company, F-Secure, the most affected countries are China, Russia and Brazil.

Water found on moon...!!!

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( Image: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University )

Is there water on moon...? The question that comes into everybody's mind when one looks at the sky, has now finally the answer...!! And the answer is 'Yes'..!!

On June 18, 2009 two robotic spacecrafts had launched by NASA to investigate the moon. The latest results by these spacecrafts show that there is water on moon. The spacecrafts are LCROSS ( Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite ) and LRO ( Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ) . The results have revealed that the lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials, and that the moon is chemically active and has a water cycle.

The NASA's findings are featured in six papers published in the October 22 issue of Science...
I have made a brief list of main points in the findings....

1. LCROSS and LRO have took out a plume of material from shadowy regions of the crater ( nearly 10 miles above the rim of the crater ) where it may have hidden from sunlight for billions of years and examined it to reveal the presence of water, mostly in the form of pure water ice grains.
2. Water being the most valuable finding, the LCROSS and LRO also found some more volatile compounds such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
3. These volatiles may be remains of a asteroid or a comet impact but these are also evidence of a cycle through which water ice reacts with lunar soil grains.
4. After a detailed study of distribution of hydrogen, it revealed that water is not uniformly distributed within the shadowed cold traps, but rather is in pockets, which may also lie outside the shadowed regions.
5. Robots up there on moon, also discovered relatively large amounts of light metals such as sodium, mercury and possibly even silver.
6. The ratio of volatiles to water in the lunar soil indicates a process called "cold grain chemistry" is taking place. Which can also happen in other airless bodies in space.
7. Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA said, "water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities, Also, the diversity and abundance of certain materials called volatiles in the plume, suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadows."

This is such a huge discovery isn't it...??

• In future by determining the environment and the place where the water could exist on moon, the exact locations having easily accessible water can be zeroed down
• The most exciting dream of humans to live on the moon may come true in future...!! So lets hope for the same...:)