• it/its

Hello and welcome! I'm Chimera, a 23 year old cat-rabbit with a sprinkling of dragon and horse. I post a lot about selfshipping & fictoromance, and just general everyday life stuff. I occasionally use cat puns in my posts and say 'meow' and 'nya' a lot, so I tag those posts with '#typing quirk'.


Tbh if I had to make like, a top 10 of my favorite malicious computer & smartphone infections, it'd probably go like this... Also, this is gonna get really long, so bear with my nerding out, peas and tank you!

  1. Jigsaw Ransomware AKA Bitcoin Mailer. Although there's decryptors available for it since the encryption turned out to be piss easy to bypass, its still kinda scary! Although to me, its mostly funny. While not affiliated with SAW by any way, I could see a timeline where John sends out ransomware and other malicious stuff to people.

  1. NavaShield. Probably one of the worst rogue antiviruses to accidentally download. It constantly plays shit in your speakers, opens NSFW websites, and in an alternate payload outright deletes your disk drive. Its annoying and awful, but at the very least rogue antiviruses are super uncommon now.

  2. Sonic Gather Battle DRM. Its not outright malware, until you trip the protection. The real kicker is that, the supposed original donut steel sprites? They werent even mostly original spritework. A lot of them were actually ripped from official Sonic games and maybe edited slightly. The creator of the game seems to be gone now, but their legacy remains. Malicious DRM is annoying, but the ones that don't just outright kill your PC feel sort of worse to me personally.

  3. Android Elite. After the whole Stingray scare, I did a bit more digging and found a lot of talk about the possible real origins behind the Stingray ransomware. Also worth noting, it may come from a real case of a fake Angry Birds Transformers APK having Android Elite in it. Another name for it is Stingray, since the more recent origin of it is a translation from Arabic. Android Elite is basically a trojan, and a wiper that deletes files in the SD card outright, rather than just encrypting them. It also sends SMS text messages to all contacts on the device multiple times, racking up quite the fee. Supposedly, Elite has an algorithm that learns from it being detected on the same system multiple times. For example, if you remove it with AVG, but you get reinfected, AVG might miss it the second time. I say supposedly because, the documentation on Android Elite's capabilities is sparse.

  4. ILOVEYOU. A classic e-mail worm! Its one of the more notable ones, and due to its quick spread caused just a bit over $5bn USD in damages. Not only does it mass mail itself to your contacts, it overwrites many different file types with itself. It also can be easily modified, so many variants came in the future with more destructive potential.

  5. BadBIOS. Few instances of infections are pesky enough to remain on a device even after a complete wipe and factory reset. BadBIOS is rather confusing, but in essence it trashes the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) of a system, causing it to effectively shit bricks. The BIOS is what helps start up your computer in the first place. If the BIOS gets damaged in some way, then the rest of the system basically just ceases to function. In most cases, a virus infecting the BIOS isn't beneficial, since many viruses rely on the use of multiple systems to spread to even more systems. But there are infections out there that target it anyway. Most modern computers use a UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) instead of BIOS, but there are older computers which still rely on it.

  6. Security Defender. One of the more annoying fake antiviruses that seems to rip its name off from a legitimate (and likely obsolete?) antivirus. It also sometimes plays garbage through your speakers, as well as flashing your screen different colors. Yeah, not a good rogue to get if you are sensitive to loud noises or flashing colors. Much like a jumpscare, you don't know when it will happen.

  7. Koler Trojan. Technically another ransomware, but actually functions like a ransomware rather than an immediate wiper. It reopens itself after a few seconds if you try to close it, so suffice to say its very difficult to try and remove when you install it. The main example I can think of is one where it masquerades itself as a fake version of an app called BaDoink. I'm sure there are other variants though.

  8. Fortnite RAT. Remote Access Trojans in general are pretty wild. Allowing malicious actors to, well, remotely access your computer... It is in the name, after all. As a kid, downloading something like this was one of my fears, but I also was wise enough to know not to download programs and apps from places I didn't trust or couldn't verify were legitimate. RATs are becoming more popular alongside ransomware these days, so its always good to remember to check where you source your programs and other files from.

  9. Free space because I had a hard enough time coming up with nine of these things already. I have no specific program examples, but Crypto miners are pretty damn bad. Overclocks your system to mine for Bitcoin / Crypto of choice. It can literally melt your system if you aren't careful. And in the case of a phone, it can nuke your battery, turning it into a... Spicy pillow, lets say.

And that's it! If you couldn't tell, I REALLY love scareware and just, find the scarier malware really fun to look at. Horror aspect aside, this stuff is no joke. Always be careful with what files and applications you download and open! Make sure you double check file extensions, and if you're particularly suspicious about a file or an app, try to look at its properties if possible.


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