J
Jyeshta
Hi, I have copied and pasted the text of a post seen elsewhere into
this message. Please tell me it's a hoax!
Gail
Begin quoted text:
Hey you guys:
Ok folks, I don't know what to do about this problem,
but I do think I'd better warn some people about it,
because if this is what it looks like it is, this is
going to be one hellish summer, and I'm not talking
about the weather.
What I'm talking about is the most stubborn, the most
sophisticated, the most destructive, and until it
activates, the most undetectable bug I have ever seen
in all my 22 years of using computers.
What happened was, as I was looking at the 2006 calendar,
I noticed that on the 6th of this June, the date will be:
6-6-6
And considering how many computer viruses tend to be set
to activate on certain dates, I got curious. And I set
my computer's internal date to the 6th of June, 2006.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
The first thing I noticed was loads of harddrive access
and the internet connection icon was going like crazy.
So I clicked on the icon to terminate the connection,
and that was when the mouse stopped responding.
Alt-F4: nothing. Control-Alt-Delete: nothing.
And still tons of harddrive and internet activity.
So what else could I do? I turned the computer off.
But when I rebooted, it was right back on the internet
doing god knows what to my files. Oddly, I could still
use the computer, although it did run more slowly; but
if I did anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to try and stop
whatever bug was doing its business on my pc, such as
stop the connection, run any virus scan or spyware scan,
or any such thing, the bug would retaliate by locking
up the mouse and keyboard.
I found nothing on the web that described such a bug as
this, and even the most up-to-date virus scans had failed
to detect it, so now what?
Ah, what the hell; unlike most of you, I have backups of
all my personal data, so I went ahead and reformatted my
entire harddrive and reinstalled windows.
The ****ing virus was still there.
What's worse is, I'm noticing that when I turn the
computer on, this little text message blinks across the
screen for just a moment; something about Satan.
And this is BEFORE Windows even begins to boot.
So, what, is this thing hiding in the partition table?
the harddrive's Master Boot Record? the PC's Bios?
Ok, round 2: A bit of experimenting. From an old junked
computer, I took the harddrive and installed in this one,
setting the newer HD aside. Still there.
I even tried starting my computer with NO harddrive,
figuring it would attempt a floppy disk boot, which it did,
but not before flashing that stupid Satan message.
It's definitely gotten into the bios.
But it's also on the harddrive, because now the old junk
computer has the virus, and its arcane bios isn't flashable.
Maybe if I try to reflash the bios? Yeah, right. It
locked me out, just like before.
Ok, now I'm starting to panic a bit. I asked a friend of
mine what I should do, figuring hey, she's a network
administrator, she'll be able to straighten all this out.
I told her what I had done so far, and her suggestion was:
"Get a new computer, and set the date back a year so it
doesn't activate on you."
A few days later I got a call from my network administrator
friend. As a precaution, she had set her own computer's
date back to 2005. Apparently, the 666 bug was already
hiding in her computer. Apparently, whoever wrote the damn
thing anticipated that some people might try that, and just
as soon as she set her computer date to April 2005, the
virus activated on her. Took out her entire office network.
She tells me she has contacted several of the major antivirus
outfits, and has been told that this is like nothing they
have ever seen before, and there might not be a solution by
June 6th. Their unofficial advice is to buy new computers,
don't mess with the date/time, and pray for an antivirus
solution to be found by June.
Oddly, nothing on the news about this. NOTHING? SHIT!
I guess they don't want to panic people, but HEY! what about
all that personal data?
MY advice is: BACK UP YOUR PERSONAL DATA!
But don't use one of those "Backup" programs to do it because
even that will cause the virus to activate, I've been told.
Use the "copy" command, or drag and drop your files using
windows explorer. Burn a CD of your data. And if you end
up restoring your files from cd after a virus hit, use your
cd in a REGULAR (oldstyle read-only) cd drive, not a cdr or
cdrw drive, because if your pc is still infected, those can
corrupt a cd disk.
Other than that, I've no clue what to do between now and June.
Oh, and if someone out there does figure out how to beat
this thing, POST YOUR SOLUTION! EVERYWHERE!
Exasperatedly,
LeRoy the bugbitten
this message. Please tell me it's a hoax!
Gail
Begin quoted text:
Hey you guys:
Ok folks, I don't know what to do about this problem,
but I do think I'd better warn some people about it,
because if this is what it looks like it is, this is
going to be one hellish summer, and I'm not talking
about the weather.
What I'm talking about is the most stubborn, the most
sophisticated, the most destructive, and until it
activates, the most undetectable bug I have ever seen
in all my 22 years of using computers.
What happened was, as I was looking at the 2006 calendar,
I noticed that on the 6th of this June, the date will be:
6-6-6
And considering how many computer viruses tend to be set
to activate on certain dates, I got curious. And I set
my computer's internal date to the 6th of June, 2006.
And that was when all hell broke loose.
The first thing I noticed was loads of harddrive access
and the internet connection icon was going like crazy.
So I clicked on the icon to terminate the connection,
and that was when the mouse stopped responding.
Alt-F4: nothing. Control-Alt-Delete: nothing.
And still tons of harddrive and internet activity.
So what else could I do? I turned the computer off.
But when I rebooted, it was right back on the internet
doing god knows what to my files. Oddly, I could still
use the computer, although it did run more slowly; but
if I did anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to try and stop
whatever bug was doing its business on my pc, such as
stop the connection, run any virus scan or spyware scan,
or any such thing, the bug would retaliate by locking
up the mouse and keyboard.
I found nothing on the web that described such a bug as
this, and even the most up-to-date virus scans had failed
to detect it, so now what?
Ah, what the hell; unlike most of you, I have backups of
all my personal data, so I went ahead and reformatted my
entire harddrive and reinstalled windows.
The ****ing virus was still there.
What's worse is, I'm noticing that when I turn the
computer on, this little text message blinks across the
screen for just a moment; something about Satan.
And this is BEFORE Windows even begins to boot.
So, what, is this thing hiding in the partition table?
the harddrive's Master Boot Record? the PC's Bios?
Ok, round 2: A bit of experimenting. From an old junked
computer, I took the harddrive and installed in this one,
setting the newer HD aside. Still there.
I even tried starting my computer with NO harddrive,
figuring it would attempt a floppy disk boot, which it did,
but not before flashing that stupid Satan message.
It's definitely gotten into the bios.
But it's also on the harddrive, because now the old junk
computer has the virus, and its arcane bios isn't flashable.
Maybe if I try to reflash the bios? Yeah, right. It
locked me out, just like before.
Ok, now I'm starting to panic a bit. I asked a friend of
mine what I should do, figuring hey, she's a network
administrator, she'll be able to straighten all this out.
I told her what I had done so far, and her suggestion was:
"Get a new computer, and set the date back a year so it
doesn't activate on you."
A few days later I got a call from my network administrator
friend. As a precaution, she had set her own computer's
date back to 2005. Apparently, the 666 bug was already
hiding in her computer. Apparently, whoever wrote the damn
thing anticipated that some people might try that, and just
as soon as she set her computer date to April 2005, the
virus activated on her. Took out her entire office network.
She tells me she has contacted several of the major antivirus
outfits, and has been told that this is like nothing they
have ever seen before, and there might not be a solution by
June 6th. Their unofficial advice is to buy new computers,
don't mess with the date/time, and pray for an antivirus
solution to be found by June.
Oddly, nothing on the news about this. NOTHING? SHIT!
I guess they don't want to panic people, but HEY! what about
all that personal data?
MY advice is: BACK UP YOUR PERSONAL DATA!
But don't use one of those "Backup" programs to do it because
even that will cause the virus to activate, I've been told.
Use the "copy" command, or drag and drop your files using
windows explorer. Burn a CD of your data. And if you end
up restoring your files from cd after a virus hit, use your
cd in a REGULAR (oldstyle read-only) cd drive, not a cdr or
cdrw drive, because if your pc is still infected, those can
corrupt a cd disk.
Other than that, I've no clue what to do between now and June.
Oh, and if someone out there does figure out how to beat
this thing, POST YOUR SOLUTION! EVERYWHERE!
Exasperatedly,
LeRoy the bugbitten