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20th Anniversary of Michelangelo Virus Scare

Posted by timothy on from the all-the-turtles-feared-dead dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's twenty years since the first big virus scare. According to security blogger Graham Cluley, who has written up his memories of the hard disk wiping virus, John McAfee predicted that around 5 million computers would be zapped by the virus on March 6th 1992. Of course, the truth was nothing like as bad — but the antivirus business was plagued forevermore by accusations of fear-mongering."

2 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:much more than 20 years by interval1066 · · Score: 3, Informative

    dial up internet

    Dial-up internet? 20 years ago? 1992? Are you talking about bbs'? That wasn't the internet. That was you connecting to a bbs. Two computers. Or Compuserv, AOL? Memeory sketchy, but I don't think the internet was what it is until several years later. Unless you were a student at a participating campus/institution, I doubt anyone knew about the "internet". I know, I was there (CSU Chico, CA, '86 alum, we had telerays and heathkit h-19 connected to the CSU system in Butte Hall. Special permission needed to access ARPANet). Might not have even been publicly accessble then. The internet wasn't really known to the public at large until '95 or so.
    Btw; the first true "virus" scare (which was real, btw) was the Tappen worm, that was about '88. And it only scared users in acedemia, since the "internet" (ARPAnet, at the time) was only available to universities, the military, selected think tanks, etc.

    --
    Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
  2. Re:Awesome IBM/Apple joke by forkfail · · Score: 3, Informative

    They ran as TSRs, with hooks into the interrupt for disk read/writes.

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    Check your premises.