For computer buffs around the world,
tomorrow may well be a day to forget.
It's the day the dreaded Michelangelo virus is set to attack our computers.
[inaudible] reports on one of the most damaging viruses known.
so.. shut things down
I mean all the stuff you've got in there
that you may really want, it's just gone?
It's wiped out, yup, it's-it's history.
Picture the same:
You get to work tomorrow and fire up your PC.
then, before your eyes, months if not years of data files
plus thousands of dollars worth of software
simply disappears into the void.
Michelangelo.
Twenty-five years ago today the virus was forecast to bring about
the end of personal computing as we know it.
Destroying all data and rendering every IBM PC compatible a useless hunk of junk.
Unbeknowst to the news forecasters of the past
but knowest to us
The virus activated only on a few thousand PCs
and ended up being a relatively minor blip in computer malware history.
But let's take a look at the virus
and see what it actually does that caused such an media uproar.
So here we are.. on the actual DOS computer.
However, unlike my usual DOS virus videos
there isn't any program to run
in order to infect this PC with Michelangelo.
Now Michelangelo is a variant of the very widespread Stoned virus,
which is a boot sector infector.
So, I have a floppy disk, which I showed you before
which is infected with Michelangelo.
All we have to do
is pop it in to the disk drive
[disk being inserted]
There we go!
And once we restart with this disk in the drive
the computer will be infected.
So let's go ahead and check that out.. now!
CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
We'll go and keep the seek test in here so you can see the whole boot
process just go right on through.
And the virus loads from the diskette.
And we don't see anything really happen here.
We don't get a non-system disk
error message or anything like that.
Everything appears to be frozen,
nothing's really loading.
In fact, the computer
is now yelling at us because it's frozen!
So we're going to restart one more time.
And it will boot up normally now that the disk has been ejected.
One more seek test.
because I like ya alot.
Here we go.. we're now in DOS.
Everything is normal.
The screen was cleared because I use a program to make DOS refresh in 60hz
instead of 70 which makes it almost look nice on the camera
But!
Everything is normal.
No programs are ever infected with Michelangelo.
Our old pal GRAPHICS.COM is 19,742 (bytes).
But, even when we run it..
nothing happens.
It's still just 19,742
Because, as mentioned earlier, Michelangelo does not infect files.
It only infects the boot sectors of floppy disks used in the system.
So now, any floppy disk that we use in this machine
will be infected by Michelangelo.
And whenever that disk is used in another computer to boot
It will also be infected, which will cause the virus to spread.
So, today is March 6th.
Michelangelo activates in March 6th.
Let's see what all the hubbub was about.
3-6 and 2017
marks the 25th anniversary.
CTRL+ALT+DELETE, let's go!
And, we'll go ahead and reboot.
As normal.
However, the date is now March 6th.
and we will see, when we boot up..
The hard drive disk light is stuck on right now
Let's see if I can pan down without ruining the shot here in the dark.
That orange light you see right there...
that's the hard disk... activity LED.
That's not turning off, which is a bad sign.
Scroll back up here..
I hope that's in the right spot.
but I can't see in the dark, so you'll have to bear with me.
We're gonna restart one more time..
'Cause our computer is not booting!
And I don't know why that is.
Okay, I rebooted but the..
the light's still on.
That's a good sign.
And there we go.. the fatal error.
"No boot sector on hard disk"
Because Michelangelo has overwritten the partition table,
file allocation table and basically anything that you need
to find where your data is on the disk.
Most of your data has not been touched.
However
access to it has been lost.
So, while this did not cause the digital apocalypse
that some news forecasters were claiming it would.
It did cause quite a bit of damage to anybody who happened to be infected with it.
Some articles I found online..
mentioned that some companies accidentally
activated the virus because their computer clocks were set incorrectly.
So they ended up running Michelangelo on the 5th of March instead of the 6th
Including some architectural firm which lost.. I think.. almost 30,000$ worth of important data
because three of their computers got hit with this virus
So, while not the end of the world
it's definitely very damaging.
and you wouldn't have wanted to get this back in the day.
So, that's about it for the Michelangelo DOS virus
thank you for joining me..
on the 25th anniversary of it's first activation.
Hope to see you around for the next video..
Thank you for watching, take care.
"It's the equivalent of doing germ warfare in your own neighborhood. And waiting to see what happens"