Virus Alert

cff said:
A computer virus cannot damage hardware. Well there are some instances in the beginning of the computer due to extremely bad hardware design, but software cannot damage hardware that wasn't faulty (or poorly cooled) to begin with.
Click to expand...

Well I believe the Win32 one could mess up your BIOS. And if your BIOS chip was soldered in ...
 
Why is it the people who go on the most about malicious activity specifically directed at them are usually the last people that attackers would even consider to exist, let alone be worthy of an attack?
 
Well boss dude, I guess in my case I felt that attackers, in this case the people involved in the child porn trade that I fought against, would consider me worthy of an attack. Or at least that's what I was told. Maybe not. I dunno. But that was the explanation I was given. Seemed reasonable enough.
 
Not anymore. But for about six months I did. Would search for web sites and shut down any I found there. Looked up pedophiles (or paedophiles if you wish) in Yahoo. Reported Kazaa and Morpheus users who dealt in it. Shortly after September 11 I had my computer fried, so I gave it up. Good thing too. If I continued to be associated with those people like the ones in that group I mentioned, I would have gone completely insane. Using someone's sister to get at someone they don't like. How inane is that?
 
steampunk said:
Well I believe the Win32 one could mess up your BIOS. And if your BIOS chip was soldered in ...
Click to expand...

Could you name the virus?

While what you say is of course possible in reality it isn't that easy.
For one the virus would have to know your BIOS type. Every BIOS needs its own flasher.
Secondly a good deal of BIOSes out there can be reflashed without software - they even can be recovered from a bad flash. So all you'd need is the BIOS file and you'd write it back.
Finally more recent BIOS should have some sort of BIOS protection built in, that has to be disabled before flashing.
 
Last fall, I had my BIOS chip wiped out from a virus (it was a 550mhz that I had since 1999). Spent the entire Fall 2002 semester without a computer, but taking a technical communication (extensive writing component) class. It sucked.
 
Yeah, way back when I shared my PC with my father, he installed something that was infected and it wiped out my system BIOS. Needless to say I don't let him touch my PC anymore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top