53 lines
3.0 KiB
Prolog
53 lines
3.0 KiB
Prolog
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Killer DOS Stalks Software -- by John C. Dvorak
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From the May 7, 1984 Infoworld
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When I was in Arlington Heights, Illinois, recently, I heard a story that at
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first I thought was pretty funny, then I realized that this funny story will
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result in not-so-funny tragedies and maybe some genuine horrors.
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The story was about how some devilish young programming genius created a
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version of Apple DOS called KILLER DOS. It is reminiscent of a kind of program
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called a worm. Worm code is specialized programming usually found on mainframe
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computers. It is designed to act independently of the operating system and
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somehow worm its way through the system and pop up here and there on various
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terminals with snide messages.
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If well written, it is impossible to trace and sometimes impossible to get
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rid of. Just as a herpes virus attaches itself to a nerve cell and lies
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dormant for awhile, so too will worm code hide in a backed-up file, ready to
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sneak back into the operating system at any time. Killer DOS works like a
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worm. The contaminated DOS is booted on an unsuspecting computer, then it
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copies itself into RAM and any other DOS found on any other disk.
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In the case of KILLER DOS, the program waits for a fixed number of disk
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accesses and then (after maybe a whole day's work passes) goes to work. First,
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it locks up the keyboard; second, it erases all disks in the systems; and
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finally, puts a message on the screen: KILLER DOS STRIKES AGAIN!
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At first glance, this may seem like an innocuous prank. But what happens if
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the disks contain important medical information on someone? Or worse, what if
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the machine is monitoring medical instruments keeping someone alive? While I
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may seem melodramatic about this, lets face it, this is simply a new high tech
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version of juvenile delinquency, and its going to get worse before it gets
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better. I've always suspected that the high tech punks I know urge the
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implementation of the Unix operating system for the simple reason that it is
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easier to sabotage than a more simple, compact operating system.
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The first worm program was done on the Department of Defense ARPAnet system
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in the late 60's. At the time, the program was called a CREEPER.
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Counter-measures were taken by systems programmers to rid the network of the
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creeper program. The antidote was called a REAPER. The term worm was first
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intoduced in a John Brunner book, Shockwave Rider. It is a story about a
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futuristic fascist society run by a computer network. The hero created a worm
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program to destroy the social structure and bring back democracy.
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The most notorious real-life worm program was injected into the UCLA system.
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It was called Pinball. It hung around the operating system for months and then
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would pop up with a message on the system console that said, "Let's play
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pinball!". The screen would go crazy as the program took over the computer and
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moved the heads on the hard disks back and forth as fast as they'd go -- all
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the while erasing files.
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