The Chernobyl Virus became infamous way back in 1998.
Also known as the CIH virus, Chernobyl was able to infect executable files within Windows operating systems, with Windows 95, 98 and ME being most susceptible.
Even today the Chernobyl virus is considered to be one of the most dangerous viruses in history because it was able to hide itself away in a computer’s memory.
Whilst undetected in memory the virus could then damage or infect any applications that were run on the machine.
What made this virus especially dangerous was the fact that it had a trigger date (see Logic Bombs).
When the pre-programmed date arrived it rewrote the files on the infected PC’s hard drive and completely destroyed it’s contents.
Even worse, perhaps, Chernobyl even had the ability to overwrite the BIOS of the infected computer in order to prevent it from starting up.
The CIH virus, also known as Spacefiller, was written by Chen Ing Hau from Taiwan.
The Chernobyl nickname came about because the trigger date was coincidentally tied in with the date of the nuclear disaster in Russia.
Read more : Malware That Changed The World