Malware That Changed The World – Sasser

The Sasser virus is yet another computer virus that crippled thousands of computers in it’s day.

Sasser was written by a 17 year-old German student, Sven Jaschan, back in 2004.

(Jaschan also admitted writing another virus, Netsky.AC as well)

Unlike many other viruses of the time, Sasser did not spread through email, and did not require any human interaction in order to continue spreading.

Instead, it infected computers by using vulnerabilities in both Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines known as the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) exploit – the same technique that was used by the Blaster virus.

Sasser successfully shut down thousands of computer servers and networks in just a few days.

Once it infected a computer it was programmed to access the Internet in order to search out other machines so that it can infect them too.

Heres more in my short series on malware that changed the world -

• The OSX/RSPlug Trojan
• The I Love You Virus
• The Blaster Worm
• Anna Kournikova
• The Melissa Virus
• The Storm Worm
• The Morris Worm
• The Conficker Virus
• The Chernobyl Virus
• SQL Slammer
• Sasser
• MyDoom
• Sobig.F
• Bagle
• The Koobface Worm
• The Zeus Virus

Related Posts

Malware That Changed The World – Koobface

Malware That Changed The World – The Anna Kournikova Worm

Malware That Changed The World – SQL Slammer

Malware That Changed The World – MyDoom

Malware That Changed The World – Code Red

Malware That Changed The World – CIH a.k.a. The Chernobyl Virus

Malware That Changed The World – Sobig.F

Malware That Changed The World – The Conficker Virus

Malware That Changed The World – The I Love You Virus

Malware That Changed The World – Bagle