OT: Re: Security question (sort of)

From: Sellam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
Date: Fri Mar 19 22:46:47 1999

On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Jason Willgruber wrote:

> The serial ports are no longer recognized ANYWHERE - in the BIOS, in DOS, by
> MSD, Windows, anything. I have already re-installed Windows.
>
> A virus planted by a hacker can damage hardware by "eating" at the chips, or
> just scrambling the code in the chip. (I know someone (Ironically, it's the
> sister of the person that did this to my computer), who's keyboard
> controller chip got scrambled.

Well, again, unless someone comes forth to edumacate me, there's typically
no way to destroy hardware from software, unless you count that POKE from
BASIC on the PET. Also, maybe monitors I guess since you can ruin one by
running it at the wrong sync rate or what not. But you can't send a "bug"
out to go munch on a "chip". C'mon, you've been watching that movie
_Hackers_ too much.

What you probably need to do is reset your BIOS. He probably put a BIOS
scrambler trojan in your AUTOEXEC.BAT or something. It then executed when
you reboot and fricked up the BIOS.

> If you noticed the red text on the top of the page, I have removed all of
> the images. I just didn't feel like deleting all the links.

Well, you only had them up there for a day. From the time I got your
message to the time I checked the page was only a few hours.

Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Fri Mar 19 1999 - 22:46:47 GMT

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