19 Mar
1999
19 Mar
'99
7:07 p.m.
The serial ports are no longer recognized ANYWHERE - in the BIOS, in DOS, by
MSD, Windows, anything. I have already re-installed Windows.
A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by "eating" at the chips, or
just scrambling the code in the chip. (I know someone (Ironically, it's the
sister of the person that did this to my computer), who's keyboard
controller chip got scrambled.
If you noticed the red text on the top of the page, I have removed all of
the images. I just didn't feel like deleting all the links.
--
-Jason Willgruber
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1>
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, March 19, 1999 6:51 PM
Subject: OT: Re: Security question (sort of)
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Max Eskin wrote:
dastar(a)siconic.com
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Jason Willgruber wrote:
I think what Jason may not have initially realized (and maybe still not
yet even) is that his Windows system configuration files got screwed and
therefore his serial ports are no longer accessible under windows. As far
as I know, its impossible to physically damage a serial port through
software unless you make it possible by building a device whose soul
purpose is to electrically short pins on the serial port on command. And
of course, no sane persson would go through the trouble.
So all he really needs to do is probably go into the Cntrol Panel, select
System, then go to ports, remove the old serial ports (if they are still
there) then add them again. Or maybe let windows find them for you with
the Add New Hardware icon.
BTW, I checked out the web site but all the links are bad. They all end
up at a Tripod "page not found" page.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: Check out my website:
http://members.tripod.com/general_1
In summary, it caused damage to the serial ports. Any computer whose
hardware can be damaged by software in this way should be thrown off the
Empire State Building.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie
to come out.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 02/15/99]
19 Mar
19 Mar
5:11 p.m.
The serial ports are no longer recognized ANYWHERE - in
the BIOS, in DOS, by
MSD, Windows, anything. I have already re-installed Windows.
A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by "eating" at the chips, or
just scrambling the code in the chip. (I know someone (Ironically, it's the
sister of the person that did this to my computer), who's keyboard
controller chip got scrambled.
Have you tried upgrading your systems BIOS? Somehow I think that's about
the only thing a virus could do to mess up your system.
BTW, this is a good reason NOT to run Windows. I'd recommend either
getting a system that runs OpenVMS or at least installing UNIX on the
system you have.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
20 Mar
20 Mar
8:16 a.m.
Zane,
Have you gone into the BIOS and clicked on LOAD BIOS DEFAULTS ?
I hope this helps. Do you have a RESCUE DISK for the computer to use
after doing bios defaults? Maybe you could do a format on the hard drive
and reinstall everything. By all means USE an ANTI-VIRUS program.
John Amirault
Zane H. Healy wrote:
The serial ports are no longer recognized ANYWHERE
- in the BIOS, in DOS, by
MSD, Windows, anything. I have already re-installed Windows.
A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by "eating" at the chips, or
just scrambling the code in the chip. (I know someone (Ironically, it's the
sister of the person that did this to my computer), who's keyboard
controller chip got scrambled.
Have you tried upgrading your systems BIOS? Somehow I think that's about
the only thing a virus could do to mess up your system.
BTW, this is a good reason NOT to run Windows. I'd recommend either
getting a system that runs OpenVMS or at least installing UNIX on the
system you have.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ | 
19 Mar
19 Mar
5:46 p.m.
New subject: OT: Re: Security question (sort of)
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Jason Willgruber wrote:
The serial ports are no longer recognized ANYWHERE -
in the BIOS, in DOS, by
MSD, Windows, anything. I have already re-installed Windows.
A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by "eating" at the chips, or
just scrambling the code in the chip. (I know someone (Ironically, it's the
sister of the person that did this to my computer), who's keyboard
controller chip got scrambled.
Well, again, unless someone comes forth to edumacate me, there's typically
no way to destroy hardware from software, unless you count that POKE from
BASIC on the PET. Also, maybe monitors I guess since you can ruin one by
running it at the wrong sync rate or what not. But you can't send a "bug"
out to go munch on a "chip". C'mon, you've been watching that movie
_Hackers_ too much.
What you probably need to do is reset your BIOS. He probably put a BIOS
scrambler trojan in your AUTOEXEC.BAT or something. It then executed when
you reboot and fricked up the BIOS.
If you noticed the red text on the top of the page, I
have removed all of
the images. I just didn't feel like deleting all the links.
Well, you only had them up there for a day. From the time I got your
message to the time I checked the page was only a few hours.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 02/15/99]
7:25 p.m.
Jason wrote:
A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by
"eating" at the chips,
I'm not a virus expert, but I am an experienced embedded systems programmer,
and have done some hardware design. That said, this claim sounds completely
ridiculous to me, on par with an urban legend. Care to explain this from a
electronics (or physics, or chemistry) point of view?
or just scrambling the code in the chip.
In a flash BIOS, maybe, although that would be tend to be specific to a
certain motherboard. There's no general way to write a virus that can trash
the BIOS on any arbitrary motherboard, because unlike much of the
"PC standard", there is not a stanard for how the flash BIOS programming
works. Different motherboards use different types of flash chips that
have different programming requirements.
I've never yet heard of a virus doing this, although I'll concede that it is
possible. Decent motherboards require you to physically move a jumper in
order to enable programming the BIOS, to prevent exactly this kind of problem.
However, changing the BIOS such that the machine still booted but simply
didn't have INT 13 serial support wouldn't prevent all software from
using the serial port. Most software these days doesn't even bother to
go through the BIOS to access the ports, because (1) the BIOS interface
is incredibly lame, and (2) on some machines the BIOS functions don't even
work correctly.
(I know someone (Ironically, it's the sister of
the person that did this
to my computer), who's keyboard controller chip got scrambled.
Sounds like a complete coincidence to me. Except for exotic (and fairly
expensive) keyboards, the firmware is in masked ROM inside a microcontroller,
and there is no way to modify it without physically replacing the chip.
Eric
7:59 p.m.
At 06:25 AM 3/20/99 +0000, Eric wrote:
In a flash BIOS, maybe, although that would be tend to
be specific to a
certain motherboard. There's no general way to write a virus that can trash
the BIOS on any arbitrary motherboard, because unlike much of the
"PC standard", there is not a stanard for how the flash BIOS programming
works. Different motherboards use different types of flash chips that
have different programming requirements.
*Note* This is hearsay as I didn't go with the AWARD BIOS for our system at
FreeGate, we used the AMI BIOS instead, however the hack does exist which
lends at least some credibility to the message.
I was told, by a person normally familiar with such things, that in an
effort to be "helpful" AWARD added some "internal use only" calls to
their
BIOS that, when called, enable the FLASH for writing and can write to it.
Allegedly it is pretty clearly documented in the OEM kit. This saves on
manufacturers having to write their own BIOS update program since they can
use the "standard" one supplied by AWARD.
--Chuck
20 Mar
20 Mar
7:42 a.m.
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6 comments
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participants (7)
-
amirault＠epix.net -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com -
dastar＠ncal.verio.com -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
roblwill＠usaor.net