It arrived at MIT in the middle of the night... 1988 computer virus - (via Dangerous Minds) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 5, 2012 - 34 comments

10 years ago yesterday, The ILOVEYOU or LOVELETTER computer worm successfully attacked tens of millions of Windows computers in 2000 when it was sent as an attachment to an email message with the text "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. Mefi Was There that day when Onel De Guzman released a virus that he had proposed creating as part of his undergraduate thesis. The BBC Looks Back. The key part of the virus was not any technical trick but the wording of the subject line - ILOVEYOU - and its attachment LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.
posted by Blake on May 5, 2010 - 28 comments

Putting his money where his mouth is regarding the recent Symantec (Norton Utilities, Anti-Virus etc.) Mac OS X virus claims...? Seems not to be, but the fellow who was sponsoring the $25,000 reward has a, shall we say, checkered past. Mac users are still waiting for the first real attack. I could live without it, but this particular religious war (however insane and inane it can get) does liven up our computing experience. If the pop-unders at MacDailyNews get around your browser's pop-up blocker, go here.
posted by indices on Mar 26, 2005 - 14 comments

The latest fad. You know you're really famous when there is a virus named after you. Avril lavigne gets digital punk.
posted by mary8nne on Jan 9, 2003 - 35 comments

Help yourself to an exploit. No biting social commentary here, just spreading the word on an ooky Win XP exploit in the form of a malicious Help Center request. The patch has been silently rolled into SP1, and is otherwise unavailable. Of course, if you want to install SP1, you'll have to agree to that nasty Trojan EULA.
posted by badstone on Sep 11, 2002 - 17 comments

First JPEG virus discovered... "The W32/Perrun virus, as it is now being called, extracts data from JPEG files and then injects picture files with infected digital images. A fair warning to those individuals who are fond of sending multimedia files to friends and families." Is everyone's porn stash threatened now?
posted by darian on Jun 14, 2002 - 28 comments

Flashers: the Garden of Eden is now closed. It's the first Flash virus. Luckily, it can only hurt you if you run it locally.
posted by darukaru on Jan 8, 2002 - 4 comments

Microsoft considering anti-virus support and why we should care.
posted by GriffX on Dec 11, 2001 - 13 comments

Rob Rosenberger, editor of Vmyths.com, writes that three uniformed federal police visited him in the middle of the night and asked that he not to publish an upcoming column that would embarrass anti-virus vendor for "national security reasons." From late-October, but intriguing.
posted by tranquileye on Nov 8, 2001 - 10 comments

W32/Vote@MM - -is being called "low risk" according to McAfee
posted by scotty on Sep 24, 2001 - 8 comments

New worm doing the rounds. Great.
posted by nico on Sep 18, 2001 - 23 comments

Mr. President, I need your advice on this attachment. No matter who you are, you are still foolish to open unscanned attachments. Sircam strikes again!
posted by dwivian on Aug 3, 2001 - 6 comments

Those British boys at it again. It was like this during the war, y'know. I remember my old mate Alan Turing beating the system in much the same way. Saved the world he did. Tally-ho.
posted by feelinglistless on Apr 24, 2001 - 7 comments

Naked Wife Virus Strips Down Computers. The virus arrives as an e-mail titled "Fw: Naked Wife" with a message body that reads: "My wife never look like that! ;-) Best Regards, (sender's name here)" and an attachment called "NakedWife.exe."
posted by Firda on Mar 6, 2001 - 19 comments

Blame MICRO$OFT for the "I love you" virus, ohh, and it has 40 authors to it
posted by tiaka on May 16, 2000 - 14 comments

since people who use Linux as a client OS are generally geeks, they tend to use one of the ugly, unfriendly default mail programs that ship with Linux distributions: from IDG with love. I hardly call it ugly if it saves your ass and your virtual "Billions."
posted by greyscale on May 9, 2000 - 14 comments