Symantec's 10 Most Dreaded Computer Worms And Viruses

To mark the 40th birthday of the Internet, online Security software manufacturer Symantec has put out a list of the "Top 10 Web Threats in the Internet History."

So here goes. The descriptions are Symantec's.

1. I Love You (2000) -- Who wouldn't open an e-mail with "I Love You" in the subject line? Well, that was the problem. By May 2000, 50 million infections of this worm had been reported. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the British Parliament all had to shut down their e-mail systems in order to purge the threat.

2. Conficker (2009) -- The Conficker worm has created a secure, worldwide infrastructure for cybercrime. The worm allows its creators to remotely install software on infected machines. What will that software do? We don't know. Most likely the worm will be used to create a botnet that will be rented out to criminals who want to send SPAM, steal IDs and direct users to online scams and phishing sites.

3. Melissa (1999) -- Melissa was an exotic dancer, and David L. Smith was obsessed with her and also with writing viruses. The virus he named after Melissa and released to the world on March 26, 1999, kicked off a period of high-profile threats that rocked the Internet between 1999 and 2005.

4. Slammer (2003) -- This fast-moving worm managed to temporarily bring much of the Internet to its knees in January 2003. The threat was so aggressive that it was mistaken by some countries to be an organized attack against them.

5. Nimda (2001) -- A mass-mailing worm that uses multiple methods to spread itself, within 22 minutes, Nimda became the Internet's most widespread worm. The name of the virus came from the reversed spelling of "admin."

6. Code Red (2001) -- Web sites affected by the Code Red worm were defaced by the phrase "Hacked By Chinese!" At its peak, the number of infected hosts reached 359,000.

7. Blaster (2003) -- Blaster is a worm that triggered a payload that launched a denial of service attack against windowsupdate.com, which included the message, "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"

8. Sasser (2004) -- This nasty worm spread by exploiting a vulnerable network port, meaning that it could spread without user intervention. Sasser wreaked havoc on everything from The British Coast Guard to Delta Airlines, which had to cancel some flights after its computers became infected.

9. Storm (2007) -- Poor Microsoft, always the popular target. Like Blaster and others before, this worm's payload performed a denial-of-service attack on www.microsoft.com. During Symantec's tests an infected machine was observed sending a burst of almost 1,800 e-mails in a five-minute period.

10. Morris (1988) -- An oldie but a goodie; without Morris the current threat "superstars" wouldn't exist. The Morris worm (or Internet worm) was created with innocent intentions. Robert Morris claims that he wrote the worm in an effort to gauge the size of the Internet. Unfortunately, the worm contained an error that caused it to infect computers multiple times, creating a denial of service.

Microsoft To Provide Free Anti-Virus

The software giant Microsoft has been criticised in the past for failing to include free security software with Windows.

Its first security package, Windows Live OneCare, failed to attract many customers and will be discontinued.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) promises to provide people with basic protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.Microsoft is hoping that MSE, available as a free download from its site, will prove more popular. It has said it will automatically update it for users.

However, rival security vendors have questioned whether Microsoft can compete with more established anti-virus players.security firms like Symantec,AVG have had their fare share of criticism regarding the effectiveness of the free anti-virus provided by Microsoft.

A trial version of Microsoft's free anti-virus software has been launched in the US, China, Brazil, and Israel.Initially 75,000 trial versions of MSE, codenamed Morro, will be available in the US, Brazil, China and Israel.

The software will be rolled out in other countries later this year.

Researchers Identify "Gangsta Gene"

Scientists say that its possible to predict whether a person is a gangster or not through DNA tests.Males with a particular form of gene called MAOA are twice as likely to join a gang, compared to those with other forms, finds a new study of more than 2000 US teens. What's more, gang members with these mutations are far more likely to use a weapon than other members.

According to Kevin Beaver, a biosocial criminologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who led the study.The relatively common mutations result in reduced levels of a protein, called monoamine oxidase A, which recycles several of the chemicals that foster neuron connections. Low MAOA activity has been linked previously to antisocial behaviour in people who experienced child abuse. While two brain regions involved in perceiving and controlling emotions are shrunken in people with no history of criminality or abuse who have the mutation.

To determine whether an environment besides an abusive childhood could elicit MAOA's connection to violence, Beaver's team looked at the genotypes of 1155 females and 1041 males who participated in a long-term study of adolescent health that covered the period 1994 to 2002.

During two rounds of interviews, participants indicated whether they had been in a gang in the past year and whether they had ever used a weapon in a fight.Overall, 42 per cent of males possessed the low activity form of MAOA, and about 5 per cent of all males said they had joined a gang. However males with the low activity form were twice as likely to join a gang as those with the high activity form.

Similarly, males with the low activity form were about twice as likely to have used a weapon as other teens. While male gang members with the same mutations were four times as likely as other members to wield a weapon.

"This gene is predicting gang membership, but it's really predicting it for the very violent gang members," Beaver says.

Nonetheless, he cautions against over-interpreting his team's results. "It doesn't mean that everyone with this particular allele is going to be violent and is going to become a gang member – or vice versa," he says.

Rather, in communities where gangs are common, people with low MAOA activity could be slightly more likely to join a gang than others, Beaver says.

However, given the high prevalence of these mutations and low rates of gang membership, genetic counselling to identify youth at an increased risk of joining gangs would be unfeasible.