Kaspersky Lab Celebrates 15 Years of Security Research, Technological Innovations, and Saving the World from Cybercrime

Kaspersky Lab Reflects on the 15 Most Influential Malicious Programs in History
On June 26, 1997, Kaspersky Lab was founded under the leadership of Eugene Kaspersky and his co-founders. June marks the 15 year anniversary of Kaspersky Lab, and the Company’s growth continues to serve as a model of success for technology start-ups around the world. With a staff of only 20 employees in 1997, Kaspersky Lab has grown to become the largest privately-held security company in the world, with more than 2,400 employees operating in nearly 200 countries around the world.
Today, Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, provides IT security for over 300 million users across the globe, including more than 200,000 businesses. Kaspersky Lab has earned its reputation for easily-managed and highly-effective protection by following a different growth strategy than its competitors — Kaspersky Lab continues to develop its security solutions in-house, and not through mergers and acquisitions. With technologies designed by the Company’s own experts, Kaspersky Lab’s products are built from the ground-up to work together seamlessly and efficiently.Moreover, Kaspersky Lab’s team of experts has produced some of the most ground-breaking detection and analysis of advanced cyberthreats. This wealth of expertise has most recently uncovered some of the most complex malware the world has ever seen, including Cabir, Duqu, and the infamous Flame malware. By uncovering these attacks, and taking a leading-role in the analysis of similar threats such as Stuxnet, Kaspersky Lab has become the world’s leading authority on a new generation of online organized crime and cyberweapons.“Fifteen years in the same business is a long time. But believe it or not, I still love it. I love our team, and the work we do. For the last 15 years we have been working round the clock every day analyzing and combating all kinds of IT threats that have evolved in that time from cyber hooliganism, via cybercrime to cyber warfare. Today it’s more important than ever to cooperate against digital threats. Recent attacks such as Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame have shown just how vulnerable IT infrastructures are to military and terrorist threats. But we are doing all we can to prevent the potential disasters that could result from these kinds of attacks,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Kaspersky Lab has prepared a selection of the 15 most influential malicious programs in history:

 1986 Brain, the first PC virus appeared: the virus spread by writing its code to the boot sector of floppy disks.
 1988 The Morris worm infected around 10% of the computers connected to the Internet (about 6000 computers).
 1992 Michelangelo, the first virus to attract massive media attention.
 1995 Concept, the first macro virus. 1999 Melissa ushers in the era of mass-mailing of malware responsible for huge global epidemics.
 2003 Slammer, a fileless worm, responsible for a massive worldwide epidemic.
 2004 Cabir: first Proof-of-Concept for Symbian; propagated via Bluetooth.
 2006 Leap, the first virus for Mac OSX.
 2007 Storm Worm [Zhelatin] pioneers the use of distributed C&C servers.
 2008 Koobface, the first malware to target Facebook.
 2008 Conficker, one of the biggest epidemics in history, infects businesses, home users and governments in over 200 countries.
 2010 FakePlayer, SMS Trojan for Android.
 2010 Stuxnet, a targeted attack on SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] systems; signaled the advent of the cyberwar era.
 2011 Duqu, a sophisticated Trojan that collects intelligence about its targets.
View more at: http://www.kaspersky.com/about/press/duqu
 2012 Flame, a highly sophisticated, malicious program that is actively being used as a cyber weapon to target entities in several countries.
View more at: http://www.kaspersky.com/flame