An overview of computer viruses
Controlling against computer viruses
Examples of Viruses

The following are some more examples of viruses:

  • 2 Joke.Geschen - The GESCHENK Trojan is not a virus. This program will not perform malicious actions on a computer and is a "joke program." Joke programs are programs that attempt to display something humorous or pretend to perform a malicious action. When run, this program will open your CD-ROM drive tray. Delete or ignore the file.
     
  • Wobbling - The Wobbling trojan was a simple joke program that was mistakenly identified as a Trojan. It does nothing other than cause all open windows on the desktop to wobble as if in an earthquake.
     
  • Parity Boot.B - This boot virus has a medium-risk. The Parity Boot. B virus is quite common and can be found all over the world. The severity of any malicious actions, or payload, is medium rating. If there is no key pressed for a long time, Parity Boot. B only displays a message and freezes the machine. As a pure boot virus, it uses an infection vehicle that loses more and more importance. Different factors steadily decrease the risk of this virus. The current trend of modern IT infrastructure is to store and transfer data using file servers, e-mail, and ftp, as well as build operating system architecture which limits the ability of boot viruses to execute. Boot viruses will become very rare in modern IT environments and will change to become only a low-risk.
     
  • XM.Compat.A - This macro virus was assigned a high-risk rating initially. It was sporadically reported and its payload caused very serious damage by manipulating cell values in spreadsheets. At the time, Microsoft Excel 5 and 7 were commonly used spreadsheet platforms.
     
  • W95/ CIH - CIH is one of the most known and feared viruses since it first appeared in the summer of 1998. It is a high-risk rating. Many infections were reported and it was very widespread, initially, through pirated software and Internet downloads. When the virus payload triggers, it erases data on the hard disk and tries to overwrite the computer system BIOS, potentially leaving the machine unusable. This payload is considered very serious. By running on Windows 95/ 98 systems, the virus infects a very common operating platform. The CIH virus was one of the first functional Windows viruses, which is a special contributing factor.
     
  • Happy99.Worm - This is a worm virus. It attaches itself to outgoing e-mail by modifying the Windows system file, WSOCK32. DLL. Thus, its infection vehicle is a Windows machine, although with Windows NT systems, this infection normally fails. It has achieved a very high prevalence. Its payload displays a fireworks graphic when the attachment HAPPY99. EXE is run producing little damage, but causing users to have to re-send the message. Because of the payload, the worm is assigned as a medium-risk rating rather than a high-risk.
     
  • W97M/Melissa.A - This macro virus infects Word 97 documents and sends itself by e-mail to the first fifty recipients in each Outlook address book. Since its payload does little damage, although the virus may insert some text, it was assigned a high-risk rating because of its infection technique. Melissa caused damage indirectly by overloading mail servers that consequently have to be shut down.
     
  • W32/ExploreZip.worm - This is a very dangerous worm spreading by e-mail and through in-house network shares. Its specific factors made its already dangerous infection technique even more successful. It replies to incoming mails and attaches itself as ZIPPED_ FILES. EXE. The mail text makes the user believe this would be a self-extracting ZIP archive. It also has a very serious payload which can delete file types like Word documents, Excel workbooks, PowerPoint presentations and source code files on all available drives. All this together leads to a high-risk rating.

There have been many others, details of which can be found at the following Internet web sites: