This week marked the 25th anniversary of the Michelangelo virus.
The boot sector virus was designed to trigger on 6 March 1992, on which date it would override all of the data on the infected machine’s hard drive.
The Michelangelo virus – which was so named by researchers for the fact that 6 March was also the birth date of Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti – captured the imagination of the press and kicked up a media storm.
In January 1992, following reports of the virus spreading in the UK,
VB
‘s then Technical Editor Fridrik Skulason wrote a detailed analysis of Michelanglo. Read the analysis
here
in HTML-format, or download the article
here
as a PDF.
One of
VB
‘s more recent Technical Editors, Dr Morton Swimmer, has also put together a fun animation to mark the 25th anniversary of the virus – whose infamy, he points out, helped encourage the general public to take PC security more seriously.
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