Security question (sort of) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

20 Mar 1999

I'd certainly like to know what kind of a virus and what kind of chip that
would be.  There's little programmable logic on a modern PC, and none of it,
if the board is jumpered as it should be, can be changed by accident or
vandalism.

Please correct me, with details, please, if I'm wrong.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail &lt;dastar(a)ncal.verio.com&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Friday, March 19, 1999 9:52 PM
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
...

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