CIH (1998)
Estimated Damage: 20 to 80 million dollars worldwide, countless amounts of PC data destroyed
Unleashed from Taiwan in June of 1998, CIH is recognized as one of the most dangerous and destructive viruses ever. The virus infected Windows 95, 98, and ME executable files and was able to remain resident in a PC's memory, where it continued to infect other executables.
What made CIH so dangerous is that, shortly after activated, it would overwrite data on the host PC's hard drive, rendering it inoperable. It was also capable of overwriting the BIOS of the host, preventing boot-up. Because it infected executable files, CIH wound up being distributed by numerous software distributors, including a demo version of an Activision game named Sin.
CIH is also known as the Chernobyl virus because the trigger date of certain strains of the virus coincides with the date of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. The virus is not a serious threat today, thanks to increased awareness and the widespread migration to Windows 2000, XP, and NT, none of which are vulnerable to CIH.
When I heard about it, one word came to my mind. "Ouch!"
ps: It seems that the original version cannot affect today's users, but some people were always improving this virus for some reason...
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