The first polymorphic virus, known as chameleon, came into being in that year was well. A polymorphic virus is able to change itself once it has entered a system to avoid detection. Throughout the 90 s, viruses became more prevalent in the computer world, and were a part of everyday life. By 1999, there were over 50,000 known viruses. However, only about 100-180 are actually in the wild .
Most viruses are in large personal collections called virus zoos .
It was the fastest spreading virus known to date, but who knows, one could be spreading right now, eating away at your hard drive, and you wouldn t know until it was too late. How they hide Polymorphic Polymorphic viruses are viruses that change all or part of their code each time they replicate. This allows them to avoid detection by scanning software. Scanning is used by anti-virus programs to check for specific sequences of code. Since the software can't keep track of every version of the virus, the virus may go unrecognized.