Whats The Worst Virus You Ever Got?

[Rydian]

Oh aye, but thanks to some (only way I can do it) idiot proofing that microsoft do with windows updates and browsers that has at least become easier for everyone.

Yeah, the days of the Blaster worm (where Microsoft released the patch that fixed the hole a month before the worm came out and it's still considered one of the worst outbreaks ever) seem long-gone, especially since most internet-facing things will check their version on startup and update in the background with only a few moments of time lost. These days are much better for a home user's computer security, assuming they don't purposely turn shit off.

as for everyone calling everything a virus, aye... the word Virus has been watered down and people seem to mix Malware, Trojans and keyloggers to true viruses.

I remember the days a virus would actually try to do some real damage rather than just put some ads on your screen

Well part of the reason is that most people nowadays have never actually encountered a virus. Viruses can rarely do damage nowadays if an AV's functional, what with modern AVs hooking into the kernel and scanning all files that are created, read, or written to and refusing any I/O with them if they're infected... so most of what people run into problems with is adware and general malware (often scareware).

 

[Arras]

The worst thing I ever got was some fake Anti-Virus thing. It blocked all executable files except for a few (Explorer, Notepad, Internet Explorer, I think Paint and some system stuff) and when you tried to visit a site using IE it blocked it as well. It's a good thing Notepad wasn't blocked, managed to find a fix on the internet on a different PC, created a notepad file that altered the registry, saved it as .reg, ran it and all exes were fixed. After that it was a simple case of running my AV and it was gone.

 

[Rydian]

Those .exe association changers? Yeah, little fuckers, that's why I keep some association reset registry files on my flash drive, for when I hit machines that have those.

Also a lot of them work just off the filename, so you can rename other shit to notepad.exe or whatever and get it to run sometimes.

 

[ReBirFh]

I don't remember the name of the virus but it was extremely annoying because it would give a countdown and after 1min/30seg the computer would shutdown, I didn't had any other access to the internet besides my computer and this made for a frustrating race against the countdown to try to search for a solution and test tools while the virus kept turning off the computer.

 

[sliver123]

my pc was blocked when wifi was turned on but when i turned off wifi it could be used then i did system restore and everything was back to normal

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I don't do stupid shit, so the only time I've gotten a virus was when I was a kid.

I had a game on a CD that I knew was infected with viruses, but I had played that game many times before I got an antivirus and nothing bad happened, so I thought maybe that specific game didn't have a virus (there were multiple games on the CD)

When I tried to copy it to the HDD to avoid using the CD anymore however, my AV (mcafee at the time) gave me a warning, which I ignored thinking that I could just clean the file of viruses after I'd copied it.

Well, that didn't work, the virus spread itself to the entire HDD, the PC got slow and errors popped up constantly, eventually I got my uncle to format and reinstall windows.

It was still pretty nasty though as there was nothing I could do to remove it short of formatting, and at that time I wasn't that good with PCs, all I used them for was browsing forums, downloading stuff over shitty 56k dialup, and playing game demos and GBC roms I had downloaded, and I didn't have a windows CD so I couldn't reinstall it myself.

With all that said, I think that was the only time I actually did something stupid on a PC (disregarding things I've said in chats and such)

On one of my old computers I remember getting a virus that just kept opening different porn sites on Firefox.

Like I don't know how I got it, I didn't download anything suspicious or go anywhere suspicious (certainly not any porn sites), it just happened.

Worst thing was that it was on the family computer and my whole family was home. So basically I had to go between working on getting rid of if and shutting off my monitor so they wouldn't think I was browsing porn.

Fun times, fun times... although I haven't really gotten a virus since then and that was years ago.

Best virus EVAR.
It was probably your family that downloaded the virus.

 

[Its_just_Lou]

It was 1989 and I was 16....awful case of crabs.

 

[Jamstruth]

Family had a really old PC (700MHz this was back in early 00s). My dad decided to upgrade it a little. Extra memory (I think he bumped it to 512mb from 128mb) and a USB hub. This caused a huge amount of problems. One of the RAM sticks was faulty, as was the USB card. Things crashed constantly and it let a virus through which infected the entire thing. No backups. Any attempts to back up the data caused the virus to resurface. Eventually my parents just bought a new PC (2.6GHz Celeron!! THE POWER!).

As for me I once infected my PC quite badly with a RPGMakerXP crack that ballsed everything up. Luckily this was just when I was messing around on an old Pentium 3. Had a similar thing on my current laptop installing a Sony Vegas Crack. The crack had no effect on my old XP machine but it infected my new Win7 machine with an annoying nagware that kept redirecting my webbrowsing. It took ages to find the files then safemode and a permanent file deleter to remove.

 

[ComeTurismO]

Influenza. Just Kidding. Never had one ever

 

[Its_just_Lou]

Influenza. Just Kidding. Never had one ever

Google 'Steve Buscemi' and focus side-by-side with your avatar....just sayin...

 

[ProtoKun7]

None because I'm sensible.

Not using an Earth-designed operating system helps too.

 

[Bobbyloujo]

About a month after I just got a new computer I got a virus on it from downloading a fake Halo crack... haha. It disappeared out of the download folder as soon as I clicked it and I was just like "ooh, this isn't good" and then two seconds later my computer blue screened. It just kept blue screening whenever it got to the desktop. I tried to do a system restore from the recovery partition but the computer would get stuck on "Setting up Windows for first time use" or whatever it says. I tried using my recovery disks that I created when I got my computer and that didn't work either. I don't know what that virus did... maybe it stored itself in the RAM or somehow messed up the recovery partition... but in the end my brother had to get his Win7 installation disk and completely wipe my computer and reinstall Windows 7 :/

 

[Minox]

I haven't really had any "worst" virus experiences, but once I got hit by one of those fake AV viruses. The one in question really wasn't all that smartly programmed and cleaning it out properly took less than an hour in total.

Turns out I had gotten it through a Java applet driveby, so ever since I've kept Java completely disabled in my browsers and have been running noscript to prevent similar situations from happening again.

 

[Rydian]

i got an police virus i thought it was real until i saw the money i must pay with ucash but now its gone

This type of thing?

(Ignore the flash on the camera, took the pic and was too lazy to turn it off at the time.)

That one was really simple though, it just ran on startup and with a schedule. Safe mode prevented it from automatically running, so I could just delete it.

I don't do stupid shit, so the only time I've gotten a virus was when I was a kid.

"Stupid shit" like browse web pages on the internet that have ads?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/14/malvertising-hits-the-new-york-times/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/25/malvertising

When I tried to copy it to the HDD to avoid using the CD anymore however, my AV (mcafee at the time) gave me a warning, which I ignored thinking that I could just clean the file of viruses after I'd copied it.

Well, that didn't work, the virus spread itself to the entire HDD, the PC got slow and errors popped up constantly, eventually I got my uncle to format and reinstall windows.

Ouch. Sounds like it was taking advantage of Windows trying to thumbnail some stuff (videos, pictures, etc.) to run some code.

 

[sliver123]

This type of thing?

(Ignore the flash on the camera, took the pic and was too lazy to turn it off at the time.)

That one was really simple though, it just ran on startup and with a schedule. Safe mode prevented it from automatically running, so I could just delete it.

"Stupid shit" like browse web pages on the internet that have ads?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/14/malvertising-hits-the-new-york-times/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/25/malvertising

Ouch. Sounds like it was taking advantage of Windows trying to thumbnail some stuff (videos, pictures, etc.) to run some code.

similiar but in europe i heard its powerfull to pay 1000 euro with ucash

 

[omgpwn666]

I had a virus that just kept scanning my computer non stop saying I had lots of viruses and that I needed to buy their program. Problem is, it made everything on my computer useless as programs wouldn't open because they were "viruses". Even my internet browser would prompt me saying that it was infected along with everything else. I don't remember the name of this virus I got while doing nothing, but it was annoying!

 

[Hells Malice]

Haven't really got a virus in years...Got one that'd display a fake fatal error message and would shut down my PC...but that took maybe an hour to fix entirely. That was my old vista PC with outdated antivirus, haha.

My favorite and most memorable virus was yeeeears ago. I downloaded SOMETHING and slowly, all icons for all programs (and I do mean slowly, took like a wee or two) started turning into cheese icons, and once they were cheese, they didn't work.
For some odd reason I never thought to even question how to stop it. I just ignored any programs that got cheese'd. Probably because the only thing I really used was IE for runescape at the time...and IE got cheese'd pretty late into things.
Thinking back it was a hilariously odd virus. That was probably 7~8 years agoish.

 

[The Catboy]

Swine Flu....I am a Linux user and really haven't gotten a virus on my computer in years.
I think the last time I got a virus on my computer, it was way back in middle school when I still used Windows XP. I believe the worse virus I got just displayed weird error messages But that was so long ago, I can't even remember most of the details anymore

 

[MMX]

once had one that played chinese music over my speakers. the volume would change from barely audible to a bit louder to some minutes without it - at random.

 

[3bbb7]

the worst viruses are RATs.