There are a huge variety of computer viruses, but the number of world famous ones is measured in dozens. "Chernobyl" is one of them, and it is still remembered, despite the fact that this virus appeared more than 10 years ago.
How it works and the history of the name of the Chernobyl virus
The official name of this computer virus is CIH or Virus. Win9x. CIH. It was named "Chernobyl" because it was activated on April 26, 1999 - on the anniversary of the famous tragedy. The creator of the virus, a student from Taiwan Chen Yinghao, wrote his program in June 1998, but waited for its launch until April 26, 1999 (the anniversary of the Chernobyl tragedy), which, of course, can hardly be considered a mere coincidence.
The second version of the origin of the name of the virus is that it destroyed many operating systems of computers and became in some way a major disaster.
The virus only works under Windows 95/98 - both systems were widespread at the time of writing. It has three versions, which differ from each other in length, features of the code and the date of activation: one of the versions was activated on the 26th of every month.
The essence of the work of "Chernobyl" is simple: it wrote its code into the OS memory, intercepted the launch of files with the.exe extension, and then wrote its copy in them. The virus did not manifest itself in any way until the appointed date, and therefore looked like a time bomb. On April 26, it activated, erased all data on hard drives and then damaged the Flash BIOS. It was impossible to recover the files, so the damage caused by the virus was colossal.
Consequences of "Chernobyl"
Chen Yinghao first infected computers at his university, after which the virus entered the network and eventually ended up on the hard drives of hundreds of thousands of people. The virus epidemic has spread to China, Australia, Austria, England, Israel and many other countries.
The Russians did not suffer too much from Chernobyl, but there were traces of this virus in our country as well.
According to the average data, more than 500 thousand computers around the world were affected by "Chernobyl", moreover, many of them stored important data, so people suffered heavy losses due to the actions of Chen Yinghao. At the same time, the student himself did not at all imagine that his virus would become so widespread, because he planned to conduct an "experiment" only within the framework of Datong University.
The experts did not have to look for the author of such a serious and terrible virus. Yinghao realized that over time he would certainly be figured out, and therefore, deciding not to aggravate the situation, he confessed and even publicly apologized to the people who suffered as a result of the infection of computers with his virus. For this he received a serious reprimand at his university.
