We’ve all caught one of those viruses that bombards us with pop-up ads for knock-off Viagra or just slows our computer to a crawl. Some computer viruses are a little… stranger than that.
The MacMag Virus
The MacMag virus was known for being considerate. MacMag was developed by Richard Brandow. The virus delivered a message of world peace for Mac users, and then deleted itself automatically. If it did any lasting damage to the networks on which it proliferated, we still don’t know about it.
The Pikachu Virus
The Pikachu virus used an image of Pikachu to entice children to spread the virus so that it could delete vital Windows files… but the coder behind the virus wasn’t such a brilliant hacker, and Pikachu accidentally asked for permission before deleting any files.
Stoned
Created by a New Zealand college student in 1987, Stoned would render your computer “hungry,” “paranoid” and “sluggish.” “Legalize Marijuana” can be found in the code of the virus.
Ita-tako
Ika-tako was a Japanese virus created in 2010. The virus was disguised as a music file that would replace your files with images of a cute little cartoon squid. The virus spread over file-sharing networks and infected tens of thousands of computers.
Ping Pong
Ping Pong was developed at the University of Turin in the late eighties. After booting from an infected floppy disk, the virus would show a ping pong ball bouncing around the screen.
Skulls Trojan Horse
The Skulls trojan horse was the first virus known to exclusively target mobiles, infecting Nokias in 2004 and replacing applications with icons of skull and crossbones.
These oddities may help us to understand why some people create viruses: Because they’re pranksters. They want to see if they can create a virus that replaces your Nokia apps with pirate flags, or make your computer get “stoned.” If only more virus developers were this creative.
