Hey Guys....

My friend and I had an conversation in about trojans and viruses...

But then He mentioned something about a virus, that could damage your machine physical, and others on the LAN, if this exist...

But he, didn't mention any name...

Personally, I didn't actually believe him, but because, i haven't heard about it...

Used google a bit, but didn't find anything...

//Jeffrey//

CIH virus attempted to reflash your bios so technically I guess you could say it physically damaged your system.

Yah, In thoery thier are a lot of things you can do to permenantly damage a computer. I've seen programs that cause Bad Sectors on disk by continously writing over and over, was something like if it ran for a month entire hard drive was useless..
I've seen flash roms as Ahmeket described, not limited to bios but other flashable peripherials (cd-rom etc).
I've also seen this one crazy thing where it attempted to blow a monitor out by flashing randomly. I'm not sure if it ever had the desired effect.

With that said, most virus's don't do any of those things, as most virus's these days have other purposes.

thanks guys....

I think it was the CIH thing, he was talking about then...

Great with some reply, heh, was about to think no one knew..


//Jeffrey//

Oldie, but Mung Bunga, was rumored to kill your Hard drive and every one on a LAN network. All the AV's have set definitions up against it ages ago though. HDK was another name for it. (Hard Drive Killer.) Wouldn't advise playing with that stuff unless you know for certain what you're playing with. I grabbed the code off a web site and even the code popped under Symantec. So..for what it's worth, there ya go.

That kill everything was somethign that was written a long time ago I beleive in Phrack, andit did that by sending a huge DUMP or random info to every port that could be opened on the computer.

To MY knowledge, it is possible to do things such as physically damage the computers disk physically by changing the height of the reading head...etc...

L_S

Hi There,

The CIH virus doesn't really damage the Computer pysically, but the software which runs on the BIOS chip, so there's no pysical damage. I think a visrus can't destroy hardware directly, but maybe the follow of the virus could be pysical damage because of a too low ventilator and the following heat or something like that...

Sorry for my bad english.

Eps__Em

i've always wondered where one would find source for older malicious virii etc. I remember awhile I googled but came up with nothing perhaps I didnt know what I was googling . perhaps you could enlighten me as the direction one would take to research older malicious code.

If memory doesn't fail me I believe there was one back in the early 90's called Ogre, or Troll or something along that line. Might have been back in the late 80's, can't recall exactly, but it was passed via floppy not the LAN like most viruses back then. I do know it was before Byte AV was out.

That ThunderByte Av had a cool looking Icon. Kind of like the teeth on a jumper cable. Looked cool didn't work very good. But thats just my opinion.

MerchantP >

You can find an rather big Virus collection on hxxp://vx.netlux.org/

Some old, and some new...

Take a look...

All >

Thanks for all the reply's...!

*Geesh, didn't think this thread was still alive*...

/Jeffrey

Destructive Code could also probably change the voltage of the fans, If i'm not mistaken a win32 app called cpucool did this, not a virus though

i heard if u have a large enough ddos,
i could cause the router to blow

maybe disabling the fans in ur pc?
there was once around for nvidia nforce 2 boards, can remember the name tho

Won't really do anything. The computer will shut-down when the cpu gets up to a certain temp. My laptop used to do that, yes, you heard right my laptop used to do that. Thats what happens when they put a prescott pentium 4 inside an enclosed space. Even with two fans in there, it still too cramped and hot for the thing.

Ohhh yeah, i remember that ...

The thing with changing or totally disabling the fans, could be some serious damage...

That wouldn't be cool, if such virus was released in the wild, via an zero-day exploit...

*Gessh*

//Jeffrey//

It wouldn't cause any damage at all. The computer would shutdown once the cpu reached a critical temperature. Disabled fans would be easy to fix too. Just physical reset the bios by removing the battery or some other method for reseting the bios (found in your system documentation).

I think if u flash ur bios with some new verion then its rewritten on bios chip and if u remove battery and reput then also ur news bios come in play . U may probably need to replace bios chip .little headache though


I noticed it during upgrading my bios once i have removed battery lot of time but i think new bios remains . Not 100% sure though

Some body was telling how to code a virus that could physically destroy your LCD display or CRT Moniter for permanent. Is it fact? Though it was not designed by him as yet but still he convinced me as per theory. What he says is simply change the refresh rate of monitor to such a higher side that moniter will die a slow death within a month. What you guys says Is it possible.Though I feel yes.

Some viruses try to clear the bios. This means that they erase the program in the ROM chip. If they will do that, the chip will be useless (buy a new mb). If you remove the battery or reset, it only affects the configuration (set to default). Some motherboards have two ROMS (one for backup in case first fails) and some (past models) they had removable chips (in socket). You can configure the bios to not allow to be flashed (deactivate if want to flash for update).

About monitors, the maximum refresh rate depends on resolution. I think that someone will notice that something is going on if refresh rate changed to high value (the monitor MUST "complain")

my monitor will give a warning and turns off if the refresh rate is too high...

How about "overclocking" the graphics card for example. Imagine a virus that sets your damn expensive graphics cards core clock to something way too big and it overheats. Not fun. And i think rapid refresh rate changes would damage at least some of the cheaper monitors. And about PC turning off when it reaches some temp; its all set in BIOS, but what about if some virus would overwrite that setting so it your pc wouldnt turn off, and THEN disable the fan/overclock cpu etc..

I was once told its possible to make a computer think it needs more electricity/power. I'm not too good w/ hardware, I'm more into software, but is it true? Could a virus really make a computer think it needs more?