💾 Archived View for spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › computers › killer.pro captured on 2023-06-14 at 16:03:27.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Killer DOS Stalks Software -- by John C. Dvorak From the May 7, 1984 Infoworld When I was in Arlington Heights, Illinois, recently, I heard a story that at first I thought was pretty funny, then I realized that this funny story will result in not-so-funny tragedies and maybe some genuine horrors. The story was about how some devilish young programming genius created a version of Apple DOS called KILLER DOS. It is reminiscent of a kind of program called a worm. Worm code is specialized programming usually found on mainframe computers. It is designed to act independently of the operating system and somehow worm its way through the system and pop up here and there on various terminals with snide messages. If well written, it is impossible to trace and sometimes impossible to get rid of. Just as a herpes virus attaches itself to a nerve cell and lies dormant for awhile, so too will worm code hide in a backed-up file, ready to sneak back into the operating system at any time. Killer DOS works like a worm. The contaminated DOS is booted on an unsuspecting computer, then it copies itself into RAM and any other DOS found on any other disk. In the case of KILLER DOS, the program waits for a fixed number of disk accesses and then (after maybe a whole day's work passes) goes to work. First, it locks up the keyboard; second, it erases all disks in the systems; and finally, puts a message on the screen: KILLER DOS STRIKES AGAIN! At first glance, this may seem like an innocuous prank. But what happens if the disks contain important medical information on someone? Or worse, what if the machine is monitoring medical instruments keeping someone alive? While I may seem melodramatic about this, lets face it, this is simply a new high tech version of juvenile delinquency, and its going to get worse before it gets better. I've always suspected that the high tech punks I know urge the implementation of the Unix operating system for the simple reason that it is easier to sabotage than a more simple, compact operating system. The first worm program was done on the Department of Defense ARPAnet system in the late 60's. At the time, the program was called a CREEPER. Counter-measures were taken by systems programmers to rid the network of the creeper program. The antidote was called a REAPER. The term worm was first intoduced in a John Brunner book, Shockwave Rider. It is a story about a futuristic fascist society run by a computer network. The hero created a worm program to destroy the social structure and bring back democracy. The most notorious real-life worm program was injected into the UCLA system. It was called Pinball. It hung around the operating system for months and then would pop up with a message on the system console that said, "Let's play pinball!". The screen would go crazy as the program took over the computer and moved the heads on the hard disks back and forth as fast as they'd go -- all the while erasing files.