Summary

• Not all viruses are harmful - some were created as innocent pranks to showcase coding skills and creativity in the early days of computing.
• Desktop Goose, a recent "virus," adds an adorable yet mischievous goose to your screen for some lighthearted fun - easily removed with the Escape key.
• Welchia, a helpful malware, was released to combat the Blaster Worm in 2003, showcasing a unique approach to dealing with harmful viruses.

The Internet is chock-full of viruses, spyware, keyloggers, and other malware that can steal confidential data from your PC and ruin your day. As such, it’s paramount to remain cautious when downloading files from online sources.

However, things weren’t always this bad. In the early days of computing, many viruses weren’t made with any malicious intent. Instead, they were harmless pranks meant to demonstrate the expertise of the coders who created them. Today, we recount all the hilarious and harmless viruses that got a chuckle out of us.

8 HPS virus

Flipping images every Saturday

Released on Windows 95, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome was a small executable file that produced some interesting results when activated on a Saturday. Back in the Windows 9x days, Bitmap (BMP) files were used to store lossless digital images. Upon executing its .exe file on the second-last day of the week, HPS would initially give a "No Problemo" dialog box.

Under the hood, though, the virus would target uncompressed Bitmap files in your system. Any infected Bitmap images, including the Windows startup and shutdown logos, would get flipped horizontally. While you could restore the image to its original orientation, this clever virus appended a string to the infected BMP files to mark the flipped images, thus preventing itself from accidentally flipping them back when you opened them again.

7 Mars Land virus

Who says coding a virus is a pain?

Written in assembly language by French coder Spanska, Mars Land was a series of viruses that didn’t possess any destructive codes. The most popular variant of the virus was Spanska.1500, which would infect .exe files. Upon execution, it would render a low-poly topological map of Mars alongside the text “Mars Land, by Spanska (coding a virus can be creative)”.

Another famous version of the virus was Spanska.4250. Capable of spreading to both .exe and .com files, Spanska would render different messages every day of the year, with the text possessing a similar format to the intros from the Star Wars movies.

6 Brain virus

The one that started it all

Although ANIMAL, Wabbit, and Elk Cloner came before it, many consider Brain to be one of the first computer viruses, largely due to the damage caused by its self-replicating nature. Interestingly, there wasn’t any ill intent behind its creation. When brothers Amjad and Basit Farooq Alvi realized people were pirating their medical software, they created the Brain virus to prevent further copyright infringement. Since Brain was meant to dissuade users from pirating their software instead of causing harm, the brothers even included a message containing their address and phone number in the virus code.

After infecting a system, Brain would replace the actual boot mark sector of an IBM PC, and move the latter to another sector. That said, anti-viruses of the bygone era had a hard time detecting it. Combine its stealthy nature with the fact that it was self-replicating, and the virus soon spread to computers in other corners of the world, prompting many angry users from different continents to contact the Alvi brothers and demand they get rid of the Brain virus!

5 Creeper worm

An absolutely harmless malware

Developed in 1971, Creeper was conceived long before the Brain virus, though it shared the same non-malicious nature as the latter. Back then, the Internet was yet to be created. Instead, we had ARPANET, a rudimentary yet functional connection that used packet-switching to transmit messages over long distances. Bob Thomas, a researcher at Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., began working on an experimental program that could replicate itself over a network.

Named after a character from Scooby-Doo, Creeper would just display a message stating, I’M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.” before moving along to another system. It wasn’t as widespread as Brain, and only a handful of DEC PDP-10 systems running the Tenex OS were targeted by the worm. Soon, the Reaper antivirus was developed to remove all remaining traces of Creeper from the ARPANET.

4 Cruncher virus

The better Winrar

During the good ol’ 90s, there was even a special breed of malware that performed useful tasks instead of messing up your computer. Cruncher, not to be confused with the recent ad-spawning “Zip Cruncher,” was a helpful virus that freed up disk space by compressing the infected files. Back then, two versions of Cruncher were conceived by Netherland-based coder Masud Khafir.

The first variant, Cruncher V1.0 could only infect .com files, a format that typically contained DOS commands. Meanwhile, the second version was capable of spreading to executable files. Since it used stolen codes and algorithms from DIET packer, many antivirus tools of yore began flagging the app as Cruncher, giving users of the software quite a scare.

3 Ping-Pong virus

A constantly bouncing table tennis ball on your screen

One of the more popular boot sector viruses of its time, the Ping-Pong virus was a fun (if slightly annoying) code that infected DOS systems in the late 80s. The virus was hidden within the boot sector of floppy disks. If you used an infected floppy containing the Ping-Pong virus, it would embed itself into the PC memory.

Upon activation, it would override the system to display a moving ball that bounces after hitting the edges of the screen. Although it was mostly benign, the virus was responsible for system crashes on Intel’s 286, 386, and 486 processors as these CPUs lacked the proper instructions to render the ball.

2 Desktop Goose

The "Honker" strikes again

Created by Sam Chiet, the developer of the hilarious Untitled Goose Game, Desktop Goose isn’t your typical malware. For one, it’s a self-contained program that doesn’t come bundled as a virus. Instead, you need to manually inject your system with Desktop Goose by downloading and running its .exe file. It’s also the only virus on our list that doesn’t belong to the golden days of computing. Rather, Desktop Goose is a recent “virus” that was released four years ago.

Its purpose? Adding an adorable (yet unpredictable) goose to your screen that would get itself wrapped up in all sorts of mischief. From leaving virtual mud tracks across your screen to forcibly dragging the mouse elsewhere and leaving funny memes, the Desktop Goose became quite a hit among PC users. Removing it is also a piece of cake: all you have to do is hold the Escape key for a couple of seconds, and the goose will disappear, never to be seen again (at least, until you manually run its executable file).

1 Welchia/Nanchi worm

Kill malware with malware

Wechia was another useful malware whose purpose was to safeguard systems from the Blaster Worm. In August 2003, hacking group Xfocus deployed a worm called Blaster or Lovesan against Microsoft’s Windows Update servers. Within days, Lovesan spread like wildfire, resulting in a DDoS attack against the URL windowsupdate.com. While the Blaster worm couldn't deal a lot of damage as the URL was merely a redirect to the actual server, it was disruptive enough for Microsoft to temporarily close down the website.

Soon, Welchia, or the Nanchi worm, was unleashed to contain the scourge of Blaster. It utilized the same vulnerability in Microsoft’s DCOM Remote Procedure Call, though Wechia had an entirely different effect than Lovesan. Instead of flooding Microsoft’s servers, the Nanchi worm sought out all traces of Blaster on a PC, before eradicating them and moving on to the next PC. As if that’s not enough, this helpful worm would delete itself within 120 days of infection. Otherwise, its self-removal code would trigger automatically by January 1, 2004.

I’d call Welchia the best malware ever, except it ended up causing some unexpected side effects. Since it was quite resource-intensive, the worm ended up slowing down systems while it removed Blaster. This led to major disruptions in servers, especially the ones utilized by the US State Department and the Navy.

Sadly, such funny viruses are nowhere to be seen these days

Those were eight of our favorite harmless viruses. Interestingly, there was a slew of other hilarious malware. NightMare and similar scareware, for example, would randomly play a loud screeching noise, and these viruses became popular pranks that many users installed on their friends’ systems to give them a scare. There was also DOS Walker, a virus that would halt all operations every 10 seconds and play an animation of the titular “Walker” darting across the screen. And there were a ton of these harmless viruses in the earlier PC days.

Today, viruses have changed from their benign past. With malware constantly evolving, newer viruses are being developed daily. And these harmful apps drastically differ from Desktop Goose and older generations of malware. Unlike their predecessors, modern viruses exist to gain unauthorized access to PCs, scam users for financial gain, and steal confidential information rather than play innocent jokes. Antivirus software and cybersecurity tools are more important than ever.