17 Nov
2003
17 Nov
'03
11:49 a.m.
On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, David Holland wrote:
Snicker,
the 'pop cs' instruction was the one reason I managed to keep from
getting the Yale virus on my very first PC (HP Vectra CS). Yale went
around in a big way at college, in the PC labs. I couldn't manage to
get it, even when I conscientiously _tried_ to infect my PC.
I wonder if I still have a disassembly for that old virii around
somewhere.
David
Useless trivia re Yale:
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/alameda.shtml
Ah, yes.
That virus was first discovered at Merritt College, by Carl Nolton.
We never figured out who had done it. We had one student who WOULD have
done it if he could, but was not skilled enough to have written it; and
none of the other half dozen students who had the skill were that
sociopathic.
We did NOT want a virus named after us!
I had had a friend in college years before, named Alan Lundell (was at VCF
with Digibarn?) who was very interested in virri, and wrote a book on
them. His younger brother Norman was working at another campus in our
system (College of Alameda). Norman requested, and we agreed, that we
would let COA take credit for it.
We had a student who transferred to Yale, and six months later, Yale
"discovered" it, and renamed it. We do not KNOW that she was responsible
for the spread (and she was not computer literate enough to have done it
deliberately)
On naming of virii: Michelangelo had no text within it that mentioned
Michelangelo. The name was assigned by McAfee; they noticed that it had a
triger date of March 5, and they looked at their calendar for "what
happens on March 5?". What would have happened if they were to have had
a monster truck calendar, instead of a KQED (PBS) one? or if the namers
were to have been in Texas, where everybody knows that March 5 was the
Alamo!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred