20th Anniversary of Michelangelo Virus Scare

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."

Comments

Re:technically

[SQLGuru]

Back then, I attributed the minimization of effect was due in large part to the publicity. People took precautionary measures. Same as the Y2K problem. It got so much press that people actually took action.

Was it extreme / over the top? Probably, but news has been about sensationalism for a while -- that's how they attract viewers which in turn attracts advertising dollars. But without the hype, people wouldn't have taken action and the problem would have been worse.

Scared an uneducated public

[Dynedain]

And right at the beginning of public awareness of the internet age meant that people were panicking and incredibly misinformed.

News reports said the virus was transmitted over the phone lines (dial up internet) and suggested turning off potentially infected machines on the day of as a precaution. My father took this to mean he should unplug his answering machine that day because it had a computer chip that timestamped messages and other nifty features. In his mind, computer chip + telephone line = susceptible to the virus.

Everyone was touting the Information Superhighway at the time, but no one knew what it was, and very few people actually understood the risk a virus could pose. The media drummed up scare stories (just like those nightly investigations into some obscure not-really-dangerous thing) and the uneducated public took the bait. I'm not going to put the blame on the AV manufacturers for this one.