This Computer Virus Shook the World | Nostalgia Nerd
16th century Italy was a dangerous place and although Michelangelo lived a long life he would have witnessed some Horror in his time horror which continues to be prevalent in society now you wouldn't expect the life of a Renaissance artist to really affect the functionality of computers some 500 years after his death but in the march of 1992 that's exactly what happened and it caused one of the biggest Global panics the world of computing has ever seen and of course I don't mean Squarespace who have kindly sponsored a portion of this video the viruses weren't new in the '90s they'd pretty much been around since the dawn of computing but with bulletin boards becoming ever more popular in the 80s they started to jump from computer to computer quicker than ever before traditionally however most viruses would rely on physical media as their mode of Transport an infected file or boot sector could jump from a floppy disc to a hard drive or simply to memory and then onto another disc disc if that disc was been inserted into another computer that machine would become infected and so on it's not quite as efficient as the internet but you'd be surprised how quickly these things propagated and that was really the problem with the Michelangelo virus the virus was first discovered in February 1991 by Roger riodan an Australian antivirus expert riodan realized that this new then unnamed virus was a variant of the stone virus a fair passive little piece of code that utilized the randomness of your system clock to throw up the message your PC is now stoned approximately one in every eight boots however with this new virus there was no message no warning it just did its thing and disappeared into the night unfortunately its thing was a lot more nasty than stoned during a virus Meetup in benevolent during April 1991 a date the media often Ted as its Discovery date it was discussed by the community and identified as a possible strong future threat its payload was designed to activate on March 6th every year Michaelangelo's birthday and the reason why Roger riodan would name it the Michelangelo virus of course 1991's March the 6th had been and gone but the virus by then hadn't had much chance to propagate and therefore very minimal damage was done however March the 6th 1992 what would have been Michael Andrew's 517th birthday could be a different matter by October of 1991 most new antivirus software of the time was able to detect and remove the virus but back then software didn't automatically update you had to get discs to update antivirus and most people weren't even aware they should be using the product in the first place however with computers becoming ever more popular disc copying and sharing was Rife making for the ideal circumstances to spread chaos now just like stoned and in fact the real Michelangelo who apparently slept in his boots every single night Michelangelo B virus is a boot sector infector this means it doesn't actually execute from within the operating system which would have been dos at the time instead it executes at bios level on at based IBM PC compatibles when you turn your computer on there's a small period of time where the BIOS is actually in charge of proceedings the BIOS is really the gateway to your computer's Hardware but at some point it passes control over to your operating system and it does that by going to the first sector of your hard drive or floppy disc if one is inserted and running whatever it finds if you were to boot from a floppy disc with an infected boot sector Michelangelo would first load straight into the top of system memory reallocating interrupt 12 so it didn't get overwritten before inserting itself into the boot sector of your hard drive and Shifting the original boot code to cylinder Z head 1 sector 14 from that point every new floppy that is accessed on the computer will be detected by Michelangelo as it sits in memory and also have its boot sector overwritten in this way a single machine can very quickly infect a lot of discs if any of those discs are then booted on another computer the cycle continues for most of a year this boot sector Shuffle would cause absolutely no problems however if your computer was turned on on Michelangelo's birthday and your clock was set correctly then as Doo o one's Channel demonstrates this would be your fate because our computer is not booting and I don't know why that is okay I rebooted but the um the light's still on so that's a good sign and there we go the fatal error no boot sector on hard disk because Michelangelo has overwritten the partition table file allocation table and basically anything that you need to find where your data is on the disc once activated Michelangelo simply overwrites the first 100 sectors of your hard drive with nulls in doing this the Dos boot sector and file allocation table are destroyed the latter acting as a lookup table for the data stored on your disc so although the data is still physically there there is no longer any way to tell when one file starts and another one ends making recovery for the typical user almost impossible so once activated it's a very destructive virus indeed and if there were reasons to think it could have spread to a lot of computers then Panic would be in the air and as you expect it would be palpable hello and first tonight the mystery defect that set to damage computers all over the world burning the midnight oil on the night before what some say could be the big crash a new and deadly virus is scheduled to strike computers around the world and they had good reasons to feel like like this but thankfully you have no reason to feel like that because you could be fully prepared with sponsor Squarespace I've been using Squarespace for years and it truly is such an easy way to build a website that not only looks good and has tons of features such as the ability to sell tickets create events and make blog posts but it has all the tools to help you with 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McAfee Associates who stated it's an extremely common occurrence it just doesn't happen or that often ACC companies the size of Leading Edge in what certainly would not be the last words we hear from him in a fantastic move of foresight oscom Technologies also announced it would bundle an antivirus package with all personal computers on the same day viruses were now very much in the headlines the next day the United press reporter Jack Lazar reported that Michelangelo could erase data of hundreds of thousands of computers around the world whilst win shat director of the international partnership against computer terrorism stated usually a virus can't be propagated by just reading a data disc but it appears to no longer be true making Michelangelo seem like some kind of magical nefarious being McAfee also piped up again stating the Michelangelo virus is the third most common in terms of reports of infection it accounts for 14% of infection reports a total of about 6,000 last year each which may be one machine or 100 as February rolled around things only got worse on the third it was reported that da Vinci systems had distributed 900 infected discs during January and by the 11th McAfee was back again this time stating that 5 million computers around the world were infected something that reporter Wilson the Silva would relay to the masses by the 13th the rest of the antivirus world was getting a little jealous of McAfee's Spotlight and decided to do something about it microcom announced a free program to disinfect the virus and by the 19th semantic had announced their free program which they advertised to the readers of Computer World in a full page spread users could download a copy via compy serve go to a local dealer get one delivered or use a bulletin board system the only problem with the latter was that lots of the media were now incorrectly suggesting that Michelangelo was spread through bulletin boards got to love the media reporting news accurately since well since the dawn of time by the end of February the hype was insane various antivirus experts had piped up along with computer colonists such as Lawrence maggid who suggested leaving your computer on from the 5th of March to the 7th in order to evade the pesky virus all good Lawrence unless you have a power cut on the 6th and your computer automatically reboots Seattle based Egghead software the largest software retailer in the country has been overwhelmed by customers in Portland wanting antivirus programs on the 28th Seattle based Egghead software had offered to ship a copy of the Norton Antivirus Michelangelo Edition for just $4.99 Unfortunately they wouldn't actually ship most copies until after the 6th of March rendering it a little bit useless simply push the button and that's all I have to do it's scanning for viruses right now as Judgment Day loomed McAfee was back this time on the Today's Show repeating his claim that 5 million systems were now infected globally he doesn't even use the word estimate apparently now this is a cold hard fact it sends the media into further meltdown as broadcasters and Publishers rush to get last minute stories out warning people of the global pandemic threatening Life as we know it on March the 3rd Poland woke up to the headline Michelangelo the mass murderer will attack on Friday whilst back in the States not only had the Associated Press reported that Michelangelo had invaded Capitol Hill but even Intel had problems having to cease shipment of their land spool networking program after discovering 839 discs infected with the virus they had been using antivirus software but it failed to detect this stoned variant if intel were having problems then that didn't bode well for the rest of us [Music] [Music] [Music] what's touted as V day [Music] arrives we'll have on-site coverage Live From The Scene later in this broadcast as dorm broke on the 6th of March the first news story started rolling in most of them were just talking about the virus and what was expected to happen an acknowledgement of the day more than anything else after all how can you have a printed article about events which are currently taking place this wasn't the internet but what we did have even then were time zones with places like Asia and Australia able to report back just in time for some Western media the Associated Press would State personal computer users reported scattered outbreaks today of the Michelangelo virus but no widespread damage from the much hyped software Invader the UPI the longer way Michelangelo virus struck around the world Friday although it did not appear to be the data disaster that some had predicted these weren't the frenzy chaos Laden headlines we were expecting they sounded more like sedate weather reports than the dawn of a global pandemic but maybe things would be different in the states or Europe maybe the virus had taken a stronger foothold in these technological Havens just before midday 1200 automated te machines in New York shut down shortly afterwards 34s of New Jersey Lottery machines went offline some of New York Hilton systems also went down and Philadelphia cable TV subscribers found their sets locked to the channel they had been watching the day prior maybe Michelangelo really had taken hold here maybe [ __ ] was about to get real it turned out that City Bank had suffered a power outage affecting cash machines a computer had affected the lottery systems a power lead had been knocked out at the Hilton and cable TV was well being cable TV although residents were quick to blame the virus these turned out to be unrelated incidents with the day rolling on with not so much as a harsh word being uttered AP reporter Bart Zigler would send a newswire to the effect of the day of techno Doom turned out to be a dud for days news media relayed forecasts have been pending Doom from Michelangelo the story had all the right elements a mysterious Invader with a sexy name but caused Havoc by a definite deadline in machines relied upon by millions the reports often failed to mention that many projections of potential damage were provided by companies that make antiviral software and stood to benefit from the scare One Source was John McAfee of McAfee Associates the largest seller of virus killing programs McAfee was widely quoted as saying Michelangelo had infected up to 5 million computers worldwide asked Friday whether he had overstated the case he said the low rate of actual Michelangelo damage was due to partly precautions so many PC users took based on reports to his company McAfee himself rapidly changed his estimate from 5 million to 10,000 computers worldwide and sure just like Y2K some of the damage would have indeed been limited by the Hyperbole and people taking antivirus precautions but 2% of the original estimate is quite a drop sanch claimed that a quarter of a million users around the world had obtained a copy of their disinfected program clearly helping to deaden the impact but the actual shouts of infection were pretty limited AT&T reported that two of our company computers had gone down after their quarter of a million machines worldwide a Bowling Center in Swanton lost their bowling league information I'm totally shocked I never dreamed that it could happen here while I turned on the computer and it did nothing it is definitely confirmed that you do have the Michelangelo virus and Reverend Stan Wilkins of the New Salem Baptist Church lost his congregation records further reports the following day would indicate that damage was a little more widespread 750 computers in South Africa responsible for managing the country's pharmacies succumbed to the villainy and Scotland Yard reported that two British companies suffered considerable losses and three computers at Boston University were dead upon boot what didn't happen was 5 million machines needing a full reinstall Harold Highland editor and chief of the industry Journal computers and security stated we raised the level the awareness but we've done a great deal of harm when this is all over top management is going to feel like they wasted a lot of money McAfee would chime in with the biggest loser in this whole thing is going to be the anti virus Community which given the amount of sales they made from this Escapade didn't really seem to be a problem and really was nonsense anyway all they had done was raise the profile of viruses and therefore antiviral programs as well although the entire antivirus World received some backlash with some even claiming that antivirus companies were to blame for planting the destructive code in the first place it was McAfee who took the brunt of it with countless newspapers jumping on his 5 million computer claim a claim that McAfee himself refuted noting that he had estimated between 50,000 and 5 m machines with the media running with the upper limit perhaps the real problem here was actually the hypocritical media for being so damn sensationalist in a bid to sell more of their own product newspapers or maybe like most things it's a bit of both always both McAfee would resign from the national computer Association on the first business day after what would become known as the Michelangelo media Fiasco concentrating on selling more and more McAfee product his company would go public in October 1992 raising $42 million in its initial public stock offering and of course remains with us today thanks for stopping by I knew he had it under control I wasn't even really that worried McAfee data loss prevention protect your company's sensitive data and your peace of mind hey how come is office is bigger than yours shut up [Music] Ed even if McAfee himself doesn't having allegedly been found hanged of inside a Spanish prison cell just hours after a court ordered his extradition to the United States on tax charges the main lesson the media Learned was that they should probably speak to experts instead of antivir salesman when trying to gather fact and foresight however given a similar scaremongering tale had happened only a few years prior with the data crime 2 virus which also wiped out hard drives on Friday the 13th although not very many at all it seems like lessons take a few attempts before they're learned it's no wonder that the next Friday of the 13th virus which fnally enough was due just a week after Michelangelo went pretty much unmentioned by the embarrassed media roll on the Millennium but until next time I've been Nostalgia nerd over telephone lines most likely the ibmcs were targeted for the virus by some unknown hacker or hackers because of their immense popularity some 30 million have been sold data crime isn't the first computer virus
2024-08-03 03:12
