10 Most Destructive Computer Viruses

Getting a computer virus has happened to many users in some fashion or another. To most, it is simply a mild inconvenience, requiring a cleanup and then installing that antivirus program that you've been meaning to install but never got around to. But in other cases, it can be a complete disaster, with your computer turning into a very expensive brick which which no amount of antivirus can protect. In this list, we will highlight some of the worst and notorious computer viruses that have caused a lot of damage in real life. And since people usually equate general malware like worms and trojan horses as viruses, we're including them as well. These malware have caused tremendous harm, amounting to billions of dollars and disrupting critical real life infrastructure. Here are the 10 most famous and malicious computer viruses.

1. ILOVEYOU

The ILOVEYOU virus is considered one of the most virulent computer virus ever created and it's not hard to see why. The virus managed to wreck havoc on computer systems all over the world, causing damages totaling in at an estimate of $10 billion. 10% of the world's Internet-connected computers were believed to have been infected. It was so bad that governments and large corporations took their mailing system offline to prevent infection. via BBC The virus was created by two Filipino programers, Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman. What it did was use social engineering to get people to click on the attachment; in this case, a love confession. The attachment was actually a script that poses as a TXT file, due to Windows at the time hiding the actual extension of the file. Once clicked, it will send itself to everyone in the user's mailing list and proceed to overwrite files w [...]