**************************************************************************** .. . ..,.. ,,. .--,.. ,==-. ,=:=,. ,=;/;=, ,;/;=, .-;%XX%:, .:+$%;-. ,=+XM#@$- =/$HX%:, .-;%@##MH- =%XH$/=. .=/X###M@. ;$@H%:, .,=+####M, /HMX;-. .-;###M##,. $@#+=, .,=##M.###. HM#;,. .,-##M.####.@##=. E M E S I S E R A ' S .-:#M@..###,@##=,. .,=/M@H . ###M##;-. Guide to Overblown Viruses .,=/%@H% . M####%:,. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .,=;%XH$/ .HM###H+=, guide to overblown viruses .-;+$HX%; . HM##@$;-. ,:/%XX$+: +H#MH+:,. -:/+/:=, -/$X%/-. -==-. ,://:,. ,,,. .,==-. .. .,,. *************************************************************************** Here I have complied a list of recent to really early day viruses that were totally overhyped, some if these managed to get the media involved and they totally screwed up the story (as usual). These viruses are in no particular order, so have fun reading these ridicilous cases. NOTE: None of these are Hoaxes, they are real viruses but they are overhyped. **^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* *~>> "MORRIS" WORM <<~* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** The Morris Worm is also known as the Internet Worm. In 1987 this was called the Christmas virus. It was claimed that this worm/virus (called virus because of it's bugs) could take over the entire internet, and that the Morris Worm was able to take down an entire network in a matter of hours. Which is pretty fast considering the time frame. It took down an entire network at Cornell University. Supposedly the damage took 98 million dollars to fix. Problems: - Fixing the "damage" only took a mere $150,000 - The Worm couldn't exactly "take over" the internet, as its bugs wouldn't allow it to spread that fast. - The bug could only operate on Sun-3 & VAX computers...that defeats all the Microsoft DOS users. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** *~>> BLACK WIDOW JAVASCRIPT VIRUSES <<~* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** Back when Java was barely created in 1996, security issues arrived. Malicious Javascripts were called "Black Widows" by some "professional" The first Java virus didn't appear until 1998 and is still an obscure threat. There is no reason to disable Java just because of a little fear of Java Viruses. They are EXTREMELY rare. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* *~>> MICHELANGELO VIRUS <<~* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* This virus is the first worldwide media fiasco ever. Researchers first discovered the virus in 1991. It was shown that it would simply erase a hard drive in March 6 (MICHELANGELO's birthday). Michelangelo was laying quiet until January of 1992, when a PC Company claimed to have released 500 PCs carrying the Michelangelo virus. Now the media just had to pick up this story and made a mistake of saying that "Hundreds of thousands computers were possibly infected by the virus". It just goes down hill from here. Another newswire article claimed that millions of computers were infected with the virus, John McAfee backed this theory up and said that approx. 5 million computers world-wide are infected. When the Big Day (March 6th)....errr Small day hit, nothing happened. I mere 10,000 computers or so were hit, NOT 5 MILLION!!!! So lets summarize this story: 1. A PC Manufacturer claims their computers were infected by the virus. 2. A software company claims they accidently sent out 900 floppy disks infected with the virus. 3. An article claims 100's of thousands computers were infected 4. John Mcafee claims 5 million computers were infected 5. Only 10,000 or so computers were actually infected. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** *~>> PKZ300B Trojan <<~* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^ The orignal warning was released warning people about a possible "fake" program advertised as PKZIP 3b. People emailed it chain mail style. Even after the threat was gone it continued to go around the world, even some of them were modified. What the PKZ300B Trojan actually does is run just like a normal setup, but then it displays a rather nasty message, but makes the mistake in an execution of the deltree command for Windows/DOS users, which it fails to delete anything. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** *~>>W95.BOZA VIRUS<<~* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** The Boza virus was created by a Astralian virus writing team. The media over looked the fact that the the virus is garbage, and couldn't function worth crap because of it's countless bugs, instead the media insisted on saying it was the first Windows 95 virus ever, and like it matters if it can't run worth crap. Some miscommunications lead to the result that people that didn't run Windows 95 were worried of getting infected. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^**^*^*^** *~>> AOL4FREE.COM TROJAN/HOAX/PROGRAM <<~* **^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* The AOL4FREE is a very special case. In fact, this could be dubbed the biggest virus mix up of ALL time. ~THE AUTHENTIC PROGRAM~ There was infact a program that gave you AOL4FREE, and was used by a person known as "HappyHardcore". The program would actually trick the AOL service into thinking you were in a free area of AOL, back when AOL charged by the hour. ~THE HOAX~ Sometime after the program was written for mac, A chainletter surfaced claiming that there is a horrible AOL4FREE Virus that cannot be detected by any anti-virus software, and will instantly take effect if you simply open your email and read the message. ~THE ACTUAL TROJAN~ CIAC released a statement that a trojan had been released and that it would delete all data off a users hard drive. This was March of 1997. The trojan was extremely rare, but the message made it sound very distructive. In fact only 240 users actually got hit worldwide from the authentic trojan. *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** * W95.CHI Virus (CHERNOBYL)* *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^** Found: Taiwan 1998 This virus was simply overhyped, in fact about only 1,000 computers worldwide were actually "Flash Biosed" to death, which is the main feature of the Chernobyl virus. This virus is able to flash a BIOS Chip and render the computer useless, it also has been known to format your hard drive, and able to hide in files and not change the size one bit.