This timeline was put together by Bitdefender. It traces the evolution of computer viruses from 1970 through today.

1970 - The Creeper Worm and the Reaper Virus Show up on Arpanet.

 

1974 - The Rabit Virus is spotted in the wild.

1975 - The pervading animal starts the Trojan Era.

1980 - Jurgen Kraus writes his master thesis "Selbstrprduktionbel Programmen" ( Self-reproduction of programs ).

1982 - Elk Cloner marks the first large scale virus outbreak in history. The first Apple II virus was spread using infected floppy drives.

1983 - The term virus is coined by Frederick Cohen in describing self-replicating computer programs.

1986 - The Brain Boot Sector Virus is released.

1987 - Vienna, Leigh, Jerusalem, SCA, Byte Bandit and Christmas Tree EXEC viruses released.

1988 - Morris becomes the first worm to spread extensively "in the wild" exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1989 - Ghostcall, the first multipartite virus is discovered by Frederick Skulabon.

1990 - Mark Washburn and Rolf Burger develop the first family of polymorphic virus: The Chameleon.

1992 - the Michelangelo virus remains dormant on the compromised systems because it would only strike on March 6, the birth of the artist.

1994 - Removalble media triggers most of the security issues of the year.

1995 - Concept, the first Macro virus is created.

1996 - "Ply" - DOS 16 bit based complicated polymorphic virus appears with built in permutation engine.

1998 - the first version of the CIH virus ( also known as Chernobyl73 ) appears using flash BIOS chip and destroys motherboards.

1999 - The Melissa worm is released targeting Microsoft Word and Outlook based systems.

2000 - The VBS/Loveletter ( Visual Basic Script / I Love You ) worm is released. It is one of the most destructive threats causing losses of almost $10 Billion to date.

2001 - Simite - a mulOS metamrphic virus written in assembly language.

2003 - The SQL Slammer Sobig and the Blaster worms are thought to have been used in the first organized attempts to create large scale Botnets.

2004 - Mydoom - the fastest spreading mass mailer worm.

2005 - The Zotob and Samy XSS worms - Sony purposfully injects music CD with rootkits.

2006 - OSX/Leap -A or OSX/Ompa-A - the first ever malware for Mac OS X.

2007 - The Storm Worm creates one of the largest Botnets in history. Zbot also known as Zeus is first spotted in the wild.

2008 - Rustock, a backdoor Trojan with rootkit capabilities is discovered. Rogue AV solutions are very popular. Koobface starts attacking Facebook and Twitter users.

2009 - The Downdrop ( aka Kido or Confiker ) invasion starts when millions of XP systems are infected.

2010 - Banker Trojans become very popular. SMS Android OS Fake Player - the first piece of maleware for the Android appears. Stuxnet cripples Iranian nuclear facilities.

2011 Android NickiBot move the botnet activity to mobile devices. Marto - the first worm to spread using Windows remote desktop protocol. Rootkit DuquA combines the technology implemented in Stuxnet with an advanced keylogger and backdoor application.

Adopted from an infographic provided by infosecisland.com  

Cross-posted from myITview.com