1986
Brain virus: First computer virus released in Pakistan.
1986
PC-Write Trojan: First Trojan horse disguised as a major shareware program, the PC-Write word processor.
1988
MacMag virus: First Macintosh virus released.
1988
Scores virus: First major Macintosh virus outbreak.
1988
Internet worm: First worm to cause widespread havoc on the Internet, shutting down computers all over the country and making worldwide headlines.
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1989
AIDS Trojan: First Trojan horse that held the user's data hostage by encrypting the hard disk and demanding that the user pay for an encryption key that would prevent the Trojan horse from deleting data.
1990
First Virus Exchange Bulletin Board System (VX BBS) appears in Bulgaria where callers could trade live viruses and virus source code.
1990
The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses published by Mark Ludwig. This was one of the first books to provide detailed instructions and accompanying source code to teach people how to write computer viruses.
1991
Tequila virus: First polymorphic virus capable of changing its appearance to avoid detection by antivirus programs.
1992
Michelangelo virus: First computer virus that caused a major media alert. Despite claims that millions of computers were in danger, the Michelangelo virus actually caused relatively little damage.
1992
Dark Avenger Mutation Engine (DAME): First toolkit designed to turn any computer virus into a polymorphic virus. Despite its threatening appearance, its wide-scale use was prevented by the toolkit's complexity and program bugs.
1992
Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL): First toolkit for creating a virus using pull-down menus.
1996
Boza: First Windows 95 virus released.
1996
Concept virus: First macro virus released that infects Word documents.
1996
Laroux virus: First macro virus released that infects Excel spreadsheet files.
1996
Staog virus: First Linux virus released.
1998
Strange Brew virus: First Java virus released.
1998
Back Orifice: First remote access Trojan horse (RAT) that allows others to completely take over a target computer through the Internet.
1999
Melissa virus: First virus to spread by email through Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express address books.
1999
Tristate virus: First macro virus capable of infecting Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
2000
First large-scale denial of service attacks to shut down major websites, including Yahoo, Amazon.com, CNN, and eBay.
2000
Love Bug worm: The fastest spreading worm in history, causing an estimated $2 to $15 billion in damages.
2000
Timofonica worm: First worm to attack mobile phones using calls generated from an infected computer.
2000
Life Stages worm: First worm to spread as an SHS (Microsoft Scrap Object) file that appears as a harmless text file.
2000
Phage: First virus to infect the Palm operating system.
2000
Liberty: First Trojan horse for the Palm operating system. It claims to be a cracking tool for the Liberty Gameboy emulator program.
2000
WebTV/Flood: First virus to affect WebTV users by infecting through Usenet newsgroups messages.
2000
Hybris: First worm that can automatically update itself by connecting to the alt.comp.virus newsgroup and looking for new plug-in components to install.
2001
Klez: A fast-spreading worm that mass mails itself and infects computers with a polymorphic virus named ElKern even if users just preview the infected email message using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
2001
Rans: First virus to infect Perl files.
2001
Peachy: First worm to infect Adobe Acrobat PDF files.
2001
MTX: First combination worm/virus/Trojan horse. The worm component mass mails itself to infect computers. The virus component attempts to block the infected computer from accessing popular antivirus websites. The Trojan horse component attempts to open a back door allowing access into an infected computer.
2002
SWF.LFM: First virus to infect Shockwave Flash animation files.
2002
Myparty: Mass mailing worm that installs a Trojan horse back door and contacts the worm author so he can break in to all infected computers.
2002
Scalper: First worm to infect Apache webservers.
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