20th Anniversary of Michelangelo Virus Scare 92
An anonymous reader writes "It's twenty years since the first big virus scare. According to security blogger Graham Cluley, who has written up his memories of the hard disk wiping virus, John McAfee predicted that around 5 million computers would be zapped by the virus on March 6th 1992. Of course, the truth was nothing like as bad — but the antivirus business was plagued forevermore by accusations of fear-mongering."
Re:technically (Score:5, Interesting)
Back then, I attributed the minimization of effect was due in large part to the publicity. People took precautionary measures. Same as the Y2K problem. It got so much press that people actually took action.
Was it extreme / over the top? Probably, but news has been about sensationalism for a while -- that's how they attract viewers which in turn attracts advertising dollars. But without the hype, people wouldn't have taken action and the problem would have been worse.
Scared an uneducated public (Score:5, Interesting)
And right at the beginning of public awareness of the internet age meant that people were panicking and incredibly misinformed.
News reports said the virus was transmitted over the phone lines (dial up internet) and suggested turning off potentially infected machines on the day of as a precaution. My father took this to mean he should unplug his answering machine that day because it had a computer chip that timestamped messages and other nifty features. In his mind, computer chip + telephone line = susceptible to the virus.
Everyone was touting the Information Superhighway at the time, but no one knew what it was, and very few people actually understood the risk a virus could pose. The media drummed up scare stories (just like those nightly investigations into some obscure not-really-dangerous thing) and the uneducated public took the bait. I'm not going to put the blame on the AV manufacturers for this one.
much more than 20 years (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) The author must be new to personal computing if he thinks 20 years ago was the first major virus scare. There were plenty around in the ealry 1980's, and some in the 1970s. Why are people so quick to think the first THEY saw was the first there was?
(2) However many years it has been - 30, whatever - it's a sad, sad commentary on our species that ANYONE gets them any more. People have had 30+ years to learn to use a computer securely, but it seems that most human beings are incapable of learning.
Re:technically (Score:3, Interesting)
I really feel it was a combination. It was dramatically over-hyped, but at the same time that did serve to increase awareness and thus diminish the overall impact, much like the Y2K issue as mentioned.
The article correctly calls it a panic, IMHO.
I think also the virus was much less effective than people realized for a few important reasons:
1. Back then people were a lot less likely to have the internal clock set properly on their computers.
2. When and if the payload would trigger, the virus would eliminate itself. Much like a biological virus, if it kills the host, it ruins its chances for further infections.
Of course I found it amusing that some of the more interesting viruses saw a lot less press. Such as "Casino", which would trash your disk's system area, but it would restore it from a backup in RAM if you could win in the slot-machine game it popped up. That's much more evil and amusing. :)
Just leave it off on March 6th (Score:4, Interesting)
It Really Wasn't Fear Mongering (Score:4, Interesting)
I asked the virus scanner to remove it since it said it would/could and sure enough it did. The down side was that Michelangelo was a boot sector infector and removing the virus made the system unbootable and I didn't know how to repair that. End result for me was that March 6th came a bit early.
But I wanted to track down where the infection came from so scanned all my floppies. I only found it on a few of them but one of the ones I found it on was the driver disk that came with the motherboard I had recently used to build my system. I checked with some friends in the computer shop where I was at school and they didn't believe it could possibly be the driver disk - but as luck would have it, they had a similar new motherboard from the same manufacturer with a still-sealed driver disk marked the same as mine.
After making sure all was clean, they broke the seal on the driver disk and scanned it. Positive for Michelangelo.
I don't remember the manufacturer name but wish I did. But the thing was that Michelangelo was being spread with driver disks from this one manufacturer and maybe others. No idea for how long.
I think sounding the alarm on viruses is the better path. I know some people tune it out and happily believe that they have never had an infection, but the reality now is that the people writing them don't announce their presence if they can help it. It's not about showing off. It's about money and how much of people's the criminals can snatch.