April 27, 2009 at 10:26The first global computer virus is 10 years old
The first global CIH virus, also called Chernobyl, marks its 10th anniversary.
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On April 26, 1999, a global computer disaster occurred: according to various sources, about half a million computers worldwide were affected, the consequences of virus outbreaks have never been so widespread and have not been accompanied by such global losses," recalls Kaspersky Lab virus analyst Evgeny Aseev.
According to him, then the data on the hard drives were destroyed, and the contents of the BIOS chips were damaged on the motherboards of some machines.
“This virus served as a turning point in the perception of computer threats by users. This was the first virus that caused damage not only to data on the infected machine, but also disabled some of the computers. In the event that the BIOS could not be rewritten again, the computer could be thrown into the trash, ”said Sergey Komarov, head of the anti-virus development and research department of Doctor Web, in turn.
CIH or "Chernobyl" received its name from the abbreviated name of its author - Taiwanese student Chen Ying Hao (Chen Ing Hau). It is a resident virus that runs only under the operating system Windows 95 or Windows 98. Having penetrated the computer, the virus did not perform any malicious actions. He waited on April 26 of each year (on that day the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl exploded) and activated. Viruses similar to Chernobyl appeared later, however, they did not cause such harm to computers.
The Chernobyl virus was first detected in Taiwan in June 1998 - the author of the virus, Chen Ying Hao, infected computers at a local university. After some time, the CIH climbed outside of Taiwan: Austria, Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom were among the first countries to be affected by the epidemic. Later, malicious code was registered in several other countries, including Russia.
Interestingly, the creator of the CIH virus at first managed to avoid punishment, since there were no official complaints from Taiwanese companies. Moreover, thanks to his brainchild, Chen Ying Hao became very famous and got a prestigious job in a large computer company. They arrested him only at the end of September 2000.
A source
" On April 26, 1999, a global computer disaster occurred: according to various sources, about half a million computers worldwide were affected, the consequences of virus outbreaks have never been so widespread and have not been accompanied by such global losses," recalls Kaspersky Lab virus analyst Evgeny Aseev.
According to him, then the data on the hard drives were destroyed, and the contents of the BIOS chips were damaged on the motherboards of some machines.
“This virus served as a turning point in the perception of computer threats by users. This was the first virus that caused damage not only to data on the infected machine, but also disabled some of the computers. In the event that the BIOS could not be rewritten again, the computer could be thrown into the trash, ”said Sergey Komarov, head of the anti-virus development and research department of Doctor Web, in turn.
CIH or "Chernobyl" received its name from the abbreviated name of its author - Taiwanese student Chen Ying Hao (Chen Ing Hau). It is a resident virus that runs only under the operating system Windows 95 or Windows 98. Having penetrated the computer, the virus did not perform any malicious actions. He waited on April 26 of each year (on that day the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl exploded) and activated. Viruses similar to Chernobyl appeared later, however, they did not cause such harm to computers.
The Chernobyl virus was first detected in Taiwan in June 1998 - the author of the virus, Chen Ying Hao, infected computers at a local university. After some time, the CIH climbed outside of Taiwan: Austria, Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom were among the first countries to be affected by the epidemic. Later, malicious code was registered in several other countries, including Russia.
Interestingly, the creator of the CIH virus at first managed to avoid punishment, since there were no official complaints from Taiwanese companies. Moreover, thanks to his brainchild, Chen Ying Hao became very famous and got a prestigious job in a large computer company. They arrested him only at the end of September 2000.
A source