Computers are essential aspects of today’s world. There are millions of people who are in need of a computer in order to finish their work or earn money. Computers are just like human beings. In fact, the computer’s CPU was patterned after the human brain. This makes the computer much more like humans. And as humans normally have, they also get sick due to viruses and worms. This is why people should always install anti-virus applications and other security systems into their computers in order to avoid infection.
Computer viruses are rampant, especially over the internet. A hacker can instantly get into your computer and steal important documents from you including your email password or your atm password. But, there is one computer virus that has taken the world by storm and made a record in human history of how destructive it was during the time.
One of the most, if not the most, destructive computer virus of all time is the CIH.
The CIH is known as the Chernobyl virus since it was supposed to trigger some variants of the virus at the time of the Chernobyl accident that happened on April 26, 1986. It is one of the most damaging viruses ever created since it can overwrite different information over the computer. It can even overwrite the entire hard drive and the BIOS system so that the computer will not boot or even turn on.
The virus was created by Cheng Yinghao, a student from the Tatung University in Taiwan. He developed the virus in order to challenge the efficiency of antivirus software developers all over the world. It was an honest challenge and a call to improve the antivirus software. But, his classmates were able to publish the entire virus and began spreading it over the university and later on, around the world. Chen immediately worked on an antivirus alongside another student from Tamkang University but it was already too late.
The computer virus has spread all over the world and has damaged countless amounts of PC and destroyed information amounting to 1 billion US dollars. Chen apologized for his mistake and later published the antivirus.
There were no charges to Chen at the time since no one came out with a lawsuit and the country had no proper law against such crime as of that time. The events that happened led Taiwan to come up with legislation to prevent and condemn these kinds of acts.
There are other destructive computer viruses such as the ILoveYou virus. The ILoveYou virus accounted for more than 10 to 15 billion dollars but the destruction to the computer itself was limited, unlike the CIH virus which also destroyed computers along with the information that contained it.Â
What Do I Think
Once the computer was infected with the CIH virus, there was no stopping it nor there was any other way of restoring the lost files unlike the ILoveYou virus which was totally avoidable by deleting the email with an I Love You attachment. Today, the CIH virus poses no threat to any PC with an up to date antivirus system.