24 Oct
2016
24 Oct
'16
11:24 a.m.
On Mon, 24 Oct 2016, ethan at 757.org wrote:
I *DO* remember that in the local BBS wars, people who
were toying with
MS-DOS viruses would make them then submit them to the AV companies to get
them on "the list." The huge list of viruses that the software would defend
against. But in reality, they were never in the wild.
At the time of the "Michelangelo" panic, it did not appear to be in the
wild. (ZERO of the "hundreds" of disks destroyed during scanning at UC
Berkeley student computer labs were retained for analysis)
The AV companies had copies, and they provided them to each other
and to the media. It wasn't until later that copies started to leak out
into the wild. In fact, we speculated that what was being found were
wannabe variants, created from "Stoned", and INSPIRED by and after the
panic.
The ones that we finally ran into were blatently obviously simply slightly
modified versions of "Stoned", but THAT aspect was never mentioned by the
AV companies nor the media during the panic.
Oh and the local guy that was involved at a high level
with the DOS Virus
group, he said at a party that had a bunch of DOS virus authors John
MacAffee was there partying with them. No proof and he probably wouldn't
admit saying that today (was told to me in the early 2000s).
Wouldn't be surprising. I knew one fellow, with journalistic ties, who
partied with both groups. He threw a Comdex party at the Landmark Hotel
with a lot of strange people.
There were rumors at the time, that McAfee was involved in creating
"Michelangelo" and the panic. But, until there is some evidence, I would
give him the benefit of the doubt; and there's no way to ask him now (he's
currently a murder suspect fugitive).
Creation of the "Michelangelo" variants that we saw did not require any
expertise, just some disassembly of "Stoned" and some trivial patching.
Creation of the PANIC was an impressive feat of showmanship.
THAT (creation of the "Michelangelo" panic), and Harold Hill of Meredith
Wilson's "Music Man" ("You've got TROUBLE, right here in River
City") really helped train a lot of people how to make money off of Y2K.
The college probably spent more than $300 average PER MACHINE testing and
preparing for Y2K! (Since there were friends and relatives of upper
officials working with the contractors, exact amounts spent were not
clearly revealed)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com