From: "Stan Starinski" <China@stealsUSJobsPatentsSoftwareMusicVideo>
>> There are no 'viruses' that damage hardware.
| Wrong.
| They're possible with some vulnerable hardware.
| I give you a historical example, first:
| Back decades ago a down-to-earth simple virus could force (CONTINUOUSLY)
| your Video controller to light up a bright pixel-cluster in CRT Monitor
| damaging that pixel, and you won';t even discover it if it's blanked by a
| valid image also lighting up that pixel sometimes.. Then virus moves on to
| the next pixel cluster.
| A modern example:
| I won't give you - I have no right or moral desire to teach you how to
| destroy hardware.
| But here's a hint - malicious Firmnware can do that, I write ligitimate
| Firmware so I cna imagine how bad Firmware can be also ceated.
| Here's another hint - that lame hobbyist OS "Ubunutu" flavor of Linux,
| several years ago it was found to damage some laptops BIOS.
I don't need "additional" lessons. I'm already in school in this subject matter.
Your description of the monitor hardly qualifies as malware causing damage to hardware.
All you have there is normal ware and tare. Something that had been seen in any computer
lab where computers were left on with a specific screen and no screen saver was used and
thus there was a burned-in image on the screen. As a function of time CRT monitors lose
their luminescence as the phosphorous hit by the electron gun naturally diminishes the
phosphorous' ability emit photons.
As for malicious firmware. That would be the insider threat. An employee who has direct
access to the firmware code and modifies it to do their bidding. There was a case of
this. If you want to burn your own EPSOM or flash your own BIOS with your own code, go
for it. There currently is no malware in-the-wild found to be doing this.
The closest any malware has come to "damaging" hardware has been the Chernobyl (and
copycats) that would corrupt the BIOS and render the a system useless. However there are
obstacles such a possible BIOS write-protect switch on the motherboard. If the malicious
code indeed corrupt the BIOS then the either you would have to re-flash the BIOS or send
the motherboard to the factory. But the hardware was never really damaged. It is a
logical damage, not a physical one.
--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV -
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp
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