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.

It said my computer would meltdown, which is pure crap.

I think I got it from preterhuman hotline. But it beeps. LOUD.

I am going to nuke it and install A/UX

Hmm, strange. Be interesting to know just what virus it is.

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.

It may not be a virus, but a "Stupid Mac Trick". Does this come up at startup, or randomly? It's unlikely to be dangerous - a real virus would just hide.

What did you download from preterhuman? How long ago? How many times have you seen this?

Please post as much information about this as you can. The entire community here could benefit.

--David

Also, I think a nuke and pave could be a slight over-reaction - unless A/UX was already in this machine's future.

A/UX Already was in the future. I looked at what it could be and it Is a hybrid.

I think I got infected from an old games pack that crashed sys 7.

"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.

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Hrmm... in my field, software has an immense effect on hardware. A programming error I made destroyed a $30,000 piece of hardware once. I've also broken many smaller things worth a total of over $10,000.

But on consumer electronics, generally not.

[8D]

Do you live in the United States? They shouldn't let you work in an atomic reactor........

}

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:

lol well as soon as a 68k springs hydraulic powered appendages with diamond-tipped cutting blades i'll be worried about a virus effecting hardware

until then i stand by my post.

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.

No vowels, that's sooo funny! LOL!

N vwls, tht's s fnny, LL?

as soon as a 68k springs hydraulic powered appendages with diamond-tipped cutting blades

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my mad scientist laboratory will be complete }

Well, if any of you mad scientists need hydraulics, let me know - it's what I do for a living!

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.

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I remember that - wasn't it called Nvwls? (No vowels)

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".

Well, if any of you mad scientists need hydraulics, let me know - it's what I do for a living!

Click to expand...

If you were anywhere near NY, NY I would be asking you for a job.

--David

I remember one trick program that somehow managed to find its way into the Control Panel folder of an iMac that played back the system alert sound back upon loading into the desktop. I didn't keep it

fnny

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Question: is "Y" a vowel or not? if it is, you just faked it

EDIT: you are faking it, and it's also a consonant. It's both!!! so you are faking it, and I am wrong/right

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.

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.

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...

Another funny piece of software I remember was an extension to manipulate the mouse driver in a way that let the pointing arrow slide downwards to the lower edge of the screen. Very annoying, as it made to point and click a challenging task.

<-

:beige: Uh, I used to have the MerryXmas virus that screwed w/ my hypercard stacks.

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.

I read that the system 7(.5?) cpu energy saver CP would, when activated, start a shrill shut down sequence, w/ a particularly large number and a red screen. As soon as I get some time I will put 7.5 on my plus to try this out. I don't think it's a virus. :b&w: