Years: 2004-2009

Predicted outcome: Not applicable

Actual outcome: The fastest-spreading e-mail worm ever

In January 2004 a new e-mail worm began spreading around the Net, appearing as a transmission-error message with an attachment. If the victim ran the attachment, the worm would not only send itself out to everyone on any address book it could find but also would attach itself to any copies of to spread via peer-to-peer networks.

The worm eventually gained the name , courtesy of a McAfee employee who was one of the first to discover the virus.