Thread
Darn Scary 68k Virus
"took up the entire screen with a countdown to meltdown"
so what did it do, open a window and start a timer? and what exactly do you mean by meltdown. there is no possible way that a virus could cause a literal "meltdown". this isn't the movies, software has basically a null effect on hardware. it can only do what the hardware was designed too do, and i highly doubt Motorola put in a "self destruct" instruction set into its chips.
and how the hell did you get it? its not like people are actually programming...well anything for 68k macs these days.
so what did it do, open a window and start a timer? and what exactly do you mean by meltdown. there is no possible way that a virus could cause a literal "meltdown". this isn't the movies, software has basically a null effect on hardware. it can only do what the hardware was designed too do, and i highly doubt Motorola put in a "self destruct" instruction set into its chips.
and how the hell did you get it? its not like people are actually programming...well anything for 68k macs these days.
Boot off a floppy and look for any files that might be it. If you can isolate it then test on a sandboxed system it would be good to know more information about it.
Would be great to know just what file it came from as well so others can be warned if it actually is malicious.
Would be great to know just what file it came from as well so others can be warned if it actually is malicious.
Nah, I just program stuff that makes car parts. If you tell it to go somewhere, it WILL, even if that means slamming itself into something very hard. I've managed to destroy a ballscrew, a spindle, and several diamond tools. Not too bad for five years. G54 G0 G64 X0 Y0 Z-140 *KABLAM!!* :lol:
Sounds like one of those silly trick programs to me. I remember one that disabled all the vowels on the keyboard. I was so panicked I was about to go out to the local Apple retailer to buy a new keyboard for my Mac LC. Thankfully I booted up with a Disk Tools floppy and was able to figure out what caused the problem...the keyboard still works fine today.
There were some viruses back in the day that physically destroyed hardware.
Dropping the head repeatedly on the hard drive was one way. Think there were some that screwed with the floppy also.
And while technically not damaging hardware - overwriting bios or other firmware will make you feel like you've been "nuked".
Dropping the head repeatedly on the hard drive was one way. Think there were some that screwed with the floppy also.
And while technically not damaging hardware - overwriting bios or other firmware will make you feel like you've been "nuked".
ftp://ftp.cam.com/pub/mac/anti-virus/VirusAlert-NVP-TrojanHorse.txt
Semantic security alert
Disables (a,e,i,o,u) keys so your wrong Coius
It would be great to collect some of this stuff.
Another prank that comes to mind was Playing Possum however i think you had to pay money for that one.
Semantic security alert
Disables (a,e,i,o,u) keys so your wrong Coius
It would be great to collect some of this stuff.
Another prank that comes to mind was Playing Possum however i think you had to pay money for that one.
I used to like some of the Mac viruses (virii ?) - they were more jokes than the evil, scary things that get around in the Windows community nowadays.
nVir, I think was one that would look for Macintalk (software speech synthesiser). If the virus found it, a voice would come out of the Mac at random intervals saying "Don't panic" (partly a reference to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy?). That was all it did! Unfortunately it contained some bugs that tended to make infected computers unstable, but it was *very* common.
A good practical joke extension was "DOSsHell". During boot, the Mac display would go black and a C:\ prompt would appear in the top left corner. Pressing a key would resume the normal boot process.
nVir, I think was one that would look for Macintalk (software speech synthesiser). If the virus found it, a voice would come out of the Mac at random intervals saying "Don't panic" (partly a reference to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy?). That was all it did! Unfortunately it contained some bugs that tended to make infected computers unstable, but it was *very* common.
A good practical joke extension was "DOSsHell". During boot, the Mac display would go black and a C:\ prompt would appear in the top left corner. Pressing a key would resume the normal boot process.
Yes, No Vowels was the one. It was on the CD that came with Macintosh Revelations, a very good book from the mid 1990s.
nVIR was indeed the one that said "don't panic" but I believe it also was a RAM and resource hog. And yes, it was widespread and came in a bunch of strains.
There was also an AfterDark 3.0 module that did a DOS prompt. If I recall it even typed in format c: from time to time...
nVIR was indeed the one that said "don't panic" but I believe it also was a RAM and resource hog. And yes, it was widespread and came in a bunch of strains.
There was also an AfterDark 3.0 module that did a DOS prompt. If I recall it even typed in format c: from time to time...
i remember belch extension for Mac OS and belchx for OS X, a good extension which causes you Mac to belch every time you start up.
it sounds to me like its one of those joke extensions.
i went as far as making a snapshot of the computers desktop with the mouse pointer out of view and hiding all of the icons and making the snapshot i took as the background.
it sounds to me like its one of those joke extensions.
i went as far as making a snapshot of the computers desktop with the mouse pointer out of view and hiding all of the icons and making the snapshot i took as the background.
In a general sense, you are correct, but there are some virii which can destroy hardware or alter its operation. There was one virus for Mac which destroyed a certain chip in your printer which rendered the printer useless.
Source: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/macintosh-faq/