First virus and viruses that affected you most

[Popinski]

First virus: Around 1993 on MS-DOS. I inserted a "puzzle game" disk that I won in a claw machine at an arcade. when I opened the .exe/.com file, my screen went blank and then a sign popped up and read "Look what I did to your computer". My computer hanged and it did no damage besides hanging my computer. It was pretty scary because the letters were red and the beep was loud from my computer speakers.

Viruses that affected me the most: Around 2003: Sasser Virus: While typing a 10-page paper for college at an internet cafe, I noticed that my computer was acting funny and my hard drive was busy for no apparent reason. My "My computer" sign turned into a different icon and was labeled "XXX" and inside were pornographic words. I went to the bathroom for 10 minutes and when I came back, my computer restarted and I lost all of my work. A couple minutes later, I got a warning sign warning me that my computer will restart in 30 seconds. I started all over and lost 20 points on my project because it was late.

 

[Quest]

I must say though I've been fortunate not hit so far (since 1995), esp. nowadays I work for IT security operations.

Was switching AV vendors over the years until about 8yrs ago....now steady, working alongside with in-house threat researchers, with heightened sense of security/awareness.

Q.

 

[XS650]

No actual computer viruses that were particularly memorable and nothing in the last few years.

Way back in the day when MS Office Macro Virii were common we had a few of those going around at work. One bimbo executive secretary sent out an email to our entire Defense Group (several divisions) warning about Office Macro virii. He memo was in MS Word and had a macro virus in it.

 

[Popinski]

plural for virus is virii?

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: Popinski
plural for virus is virii?


No, but I like it

Since we are speaking English the correct plural would be viruses.

Virii wouldn't be correct Latin either.

The Latin plural would prolly also be virus.

 

[tonycarguy]

I once got the search engine virus, where links from yahoo or google are hijacked. That is the worst virus ever because anti-viruses and anti-malware weren't able to prevent or delete it. After 4 hours of trying to remove it, I gave up and reinstalled Windows

 

[BearZDefect]

First virus I encountered was 'stoned' on DOS, but that wasn't my machine. It came repeatedly from infected diskettes.

Then many years later (but yet many years ago) there was 'blaster' that came through an open dial-up Internet connection, but thankfully was not persistent. The next year I found a friend's PC that was on DSL (vs dial up) infected with so many ugly things I was surprised the PC still worked and the user hadn't lost identity, bank account, and everything in between.

And there was the Linux server that got hacked by spammers to send their spam.

I learned something valuable from those. Happily no others have infected my PCs.

And no anti-virus on my own PC either. I can't stand those. Thankfully there is now MSE for my wife's PC so she doesn't have to nag me about whether a virus is making her PC act strange.

 

[Mustang_Cougar]

In the mid-90's I managed to infect my own PC w/a variant of the "Wazzu" macro virus; funny thing is I was actually attending WSU at the time. Anyway, it would insert the word "WAZZU" in the header & footer of every Word (Works?) document I printed. As this was sort of "back in the day" and I didn't have a clue about how to fix it, I just used a lot of "White-Out."

Lately though, one of my work computers "somehow" acquired a fake virus protection infection...the type where you are supposed to buy the protection suite from the Borat-types who coded the virus in the first place. Anyway, it was pretty easy to fix thanks to a thumb drive and Malwarebytes. Nice try, Nikolai!

 

[DragRace]

NONE!

Sandboxing for the win!

 

[tmorris1]

My first virus was on a Macintosh SE/30. I bought a piece of software that had it on the install floppy disk. I had to run a program called Disinfectant to get rid of it.

 

[Popinski]

Originally Posted By: tmorris1
My first virus was on a Macintosh SE/30. I bought a piece of software that had it on the install floppy disk. I had to run a program called Disinfectant to get rid of it.


I remember buying a Mac SE/30 from a friend for $10. Even though I hate macintosh, that machine was a lot of fun!!!! So much better than the IBM back in the day.

 

[GrtArtiste]

About 12 years ago I had a drive-by attack on an unprotected computer. The guy hijacked my browser and and when I tried to enter a URL all I could see was his face. I remember clearing out the cache-cookies and didn't have that problem anymore.

Since then I've wised-up about about safe hex and have not actually had an infection which caused trouble. Occasionally, either Avira or MBAM will say something was found and fixed but that's all. I've never had to reinstall Windows. But when I'm in the mood to surf strange sites or click on suspicious links, I know enough to use Linux.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

The only time I've ever had a machine hosed by a virus or malware wasn't that long ago. It was working fine, I got up and left chrome open and came back and ... that was it.

 

[tmorris1]

Originally Posted By: Popinski
Originally Posted By: tmorris1
My first virus was on a Macintosh SE/30. I bought a piece of software that had it on the install floppy disk. I had to run a program called Disinfectant to get rid of it.


I remember buying a Mac SE/30 from a friend for $10. Even though I hate macintosh, that machine was a lot of fun!!!! So much better than the IBM back in the day.

They was nothing that compared to them back then for ease of use and productivity.