Return-Path: XPUM04@prime-a.central-services.umist.ac.uk Received: from G.SEI.CMU.EDU by ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu (5.61/2.3) id AA04521; Wed, 20 Jun 90 17:26:21 -0400 Received: from SEI.CMU.EDU by g.sei.cmu.edu (5.61/2.5) id AA07112; Wed, 20 Jun 90 17:26:19 -0400 Received: from nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by sei.cmu.edu (5.61/2.3) id AA23369; Wed, 20 Jun 90 17:26:12 -0400 Received: from sun.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by vax.NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK via Janet with NIFTP id aa23256; 20 Jun 90 16:21 BST From: Anthony Appleyard To: DAVIDF@cs.heriot-watt.ac.uk Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 16:33:16 BST Message-Id: <$TGWGCZNQBTQX at UMPA> Subject: Virus-L vol 0 issue #1021 Virus-L Digest Fri, 21 Oct 88, Volume 0 : Issue #1021 Today's Topics Re: More on hardware damage Software frying Commodores PC disk diagnostics- destructive? Aldus gets hit again Software effects on hardware Re: Aldus gets hit again ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 08:40:40 MEZ From: "Dr. Gregor Reich" Subject: Re: More on hardware damage In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 20 Oct 88 21:34:00 CDT from I think I have to clear up a few things about my remark on "no way to influence the hardware". What I feel the danger of a virus is, that something goes on which can not be stopped until it's to late. This can happen (on the hardware side) by changing the seek time of a drive to a value which influences its performance over time. The other possibilities, i.e. bringing the heads in a resonance status or frying the monitor (you can do the same on a Hercules card), would not be unnoticed by the people in front of the screen. If you have a BBS or something else running unobserved, that's of course another story. G. Reich, Institute for Analytical Chemistry, University of Vienna, Austria -------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 10:08:00 EDT From: Shatner and Nimoy in '92! Subject: Software frying Commodores Remember the Commodore Pet? It was made back around 1977. Referencing a certain memory location made the 6502 run at 2 Mhz (I think) instead of 1 Mhz. The only drawback was that 1. the machine was unreliable at that speed, and 2. on certain models of the Pet, doing so could fry certain chips. -------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 12:24:08 EDT From: "Mark F. Haven" Subject: PC disk diagnostics- destructive? "Date: Thu, 20 Oct 88 17:16:00 MDT Sender: Virus Discussion List Subject: Aldus gets hit again I've just received a word-of-mouth announcement that Aldus Corporation was hit by another virus. The original announcement, I'm told, came from the Associated Press board on Compuserve. The details that I have are sketchy, but they say that the virus was called nVir (?). If anyone has any more information on this, *please* send it to the list! Also, the same announcement on Compuserve said that Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh PA) was also hit by a virus this last week. No more details on that one, though. Does anyone have any more information on this? The Compuserve message was dated today, 10/21/88. Kenneth R. van Wyk Calvin: Says here that there are four User Services Senior Consultant pecks in a bushel. What's a peck? Lehigh University Computing Center Hobbes: A quick smooch. Internet: Calvin: You know, I just don't understand BITNET: this math stuff! -------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 13:46:17 CDT From: Kevin Trojanowski Subject: Software effects on hardware A few years back, I remember hearing some acquaintances talking about a method of "punishing" someone they didn't like -- they would give him copies of pirated software which had the boot sector (or some such) changed so that when he would boot the disk, the drive would be told to seek track 99. On the old Commodore-64 drives, this caused the drive head to fall off the glides, damage itself on the stops, or some equiavalent thereof -- in any case, it ruined the drive. -Kevin Trojanowski, troj@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu -------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 15:22:51 EDT From: Joe McMahon Subject: Re: Aldus gets hit again In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 21 Oct 88 14:31:43 EDT from >... they say that the virus was called nVir (?). If anyone has any more >information on this, *please* send it to the list! Boy, I don't understand that at all. nVIR is a well-known Mac virus that can be fought quite successfully with the "Vaccine" CDEV. If this is the known strain of nVIR, Aldus isn't being very careful about viruses. For those who know about nVIR, you may delete the rest of this message. nVIR is a virus supposedly based on some assembler source which was posted in CompuServe last year sometime. It follows standard spread patterns (application -> system, system -> applications), but has a few bugs. It doesn't check for a "killed" version of itself and does not completely infect applications which have protected code resources. Its "function" is to (on a 1-in-16 chance) say "Don't panic" if MacInTalk is installed, and to beep if it isn't. The LISTSERV here at SCFVM has both a program to remove it from your applications and a better explanation (in the virus documentation stack). You must use ResEdit to get it out of your System files. Again, since source of sorts was available for this one, it may have been modified to be more sophisticated and more agressive; it is also possible that it has been made Vaccine-proof. - - Joe M. -------------------- *** end of Virus-L issue ***