Virus.DOS.Michelangelo (25 years later)

25 years ago today, the Michelangelo virus was forecast to wreak havoc on PCs across the globe, wiping out data and causing thousands of people to rush out and buy antivirus software in hopes of avoiding disaster. In the end, it didn't really matter, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Michelangelo came and went, but today, 25 years later, we honor its attempts at world domination.

[Lewis-sjgd]

The famous words of danooct1 "this virus is known for its destructive capabilities, so let's go ahead and run it."

[VleerLab]

The German language news report said "The Michelangelo virus is more harmless than what was feared" It's not quite as dramatic as the other reports :P

[hgbugalou]

The Michelangelo / Friday the 13th virus is what got me into computers in 9th grade. Prior to this I had little experience with computers. In a word processing class I took, I was messing around with some DOS commands I learned from a book my mother had. I came across the msav.exe program (Microsoft Antivirus!) and ran it. It found my computer was infected with Michelangelo. I checked my buddies computer next to me and it had Friday the 13th (which is a Michelangelo variant). I started to look everywhere else and it was running rampant across all the computers. I warned the teacher and the class that all of the computers would be screwed up the next Friday the 13th. The day came and all the computers were wiped out. That day forward the teacher thought I was a computer genius and I became his tech fixing his machines. I didn't have to do any of the word processing work, and I still got an A for that class. That said, I probably learned a lot more than anyone else while working on those computers for that year and I continued learning after that class. I have been working in IT for the past 15 years now.

[nickp.]

My computer had the Michaelangelo virus back in the day. I recall installing a virus scanner (McAfee) at 15 minutes til midnight on the evening of March 5th to scan just to be sure I was not infected. I was surprised to find out my PC was in fact infected. Lucky I scanned when I did. I set my clock back a few weeks and then started the cleanup. Cleaned it from the HD and then started scanning my floppies. I had well over 100 floppies that were infected. It became obvious how I became infected while scanning all my floppies. I attended the WCRA hamfest (amateur radio & computer show) a little more than a month earlier, end of January, at "The Odeum Expo Center" (a local venue in the Chicago burbs) and bought a bunch of floppies with different shareware software on them from a particular vendor. While scanning all of my floppies I discovered nearly 80% of the floppies I bought from that vendor were infected and that also turned out to be about two thirds of my total infected floppies. I did keep a well marked infected floppy laying around, afterward and several months later intentionally infected a system with it. I seem to recall though that after the machine was infected yet prior to the trigger date all you had to do to infect additional floppies was to access them in the floppy drive in any way, even something as simple as pulling up the file directory was enough to infect any floppies you put into the computer. I had quite a bit of fun just messing around with Michaelangelo to see what happened, and when I did intentionally trigger the virus it did it's thing without fail. Fun memories :)

[deltacell]

the boot up sound... music to my ears...

[Xamp]

I like how the german news clip is about how the virus only infected a few thousand PCs, while the others make it out to be a huge deal.

Although i'm not sure about that other non-english clip.

[YF]

boot sector infector

thats a fun string of words to say

[EarlFaulk]

Still remember the paranoia about this virus. Heck, years later when I was a teenager someone told me that he still keeps his pc turned off during Michelangelo's birthday. Nowadays, I would roll my eyes if someone told me that.

[virushunter]

Michelangelo was what got me interested in viruses. My school got its first computers around the time the media hype over it reached its peak. My father was wary of disks I brought home from school and when he said why, I was instantly determined to catch it. It was about 10 years later that I actually did, and today I have a zoo of viruses.

[prizedcoffeecup]

I remember somebody trying to tell me this virus was still around on a website and could really mess up your computer...then I found out that this virus was for DOS and that they hadn't used a computer since the 5th generation DOS operating systems.

[Toxoidb]

How would I describe danooct1?

"He makes computer malware demonstration videos showcasing the mayhem of older malware common during the early ages of computing. He also reviews malware submitted to him by his viewers, created with the intention of causing as much digital mayhem as possible. He has the ability to explain complicated computing concepts in a simple and accessible way, and also has managed to stay original and fresh despite creating videos for almost 8 years. He also has a very seductive voice."

[Wormetti]

It spread around Australia, I'd be surprised if it was only a few thousand. A few friends had disks with it but we removed it before the activation date. I still have some 5.25" disks with all the viruses I found in the wild.

[rivetheaded]

*My favourite pickup line from danooct1: One more seek test, because I like ya alot.*

[jacecurran]

I love the news clips at the beginning of the episode; it definitely adds a lot of context.

[raydeenk]

I remember when the DaVinci worm almost sunk that oil tanker. Thank goodness a bunch of intrepid hackers managed to stop it in time.

[keeperkeys]

0:22 ~ 0:28
"...Michelangelo's birthday, in this day it destroys all the information stored in the archive file, a loss..."

[pvc]

If it just erases boot sector and FAT then data recovery companies should be able to recover the data (on physical level or by doing statistical file reassembly, cluster by cluster). It would cost some money but it's not the end of the world.

[pcsecuritychannel]

Wow. I wasn't even born when this one went off. Where do you get this stuff?

[sabletooth]

I like that the German report is indeed talking about how Michelangelo didn't do all that much after all. :D
And to answer your question: Cool dude showcasing some really old computer viruses, some of which are hilarious!

[rivet]

My dad in College had a mac where he collected viruses on floppies since they couldn't really hurt it, and he called it his virus zoo. Apparently he even found one that would have hurt his mac! If I remember right, he had this one as well.