The World Peace virus was a computer virus introduced in 1988 by Richard Brandow, who at the time was editor and publisher of MacMag computer magazine. [1] [2] [3]
Operation of the virus
The virus infected Macintosh computers, and the intention was that on 2 March 1988 all infected computers would show the message "RICHARD BRANDOW, publisher of MacMag, and its entire staff would like to take this opportunity to convey their UNIVERSAL MESSAGE OF PEACE to all Macintosh users around the world", and the virus would then delete itself. The virus was a boot sector virus. It copied a resource into the System folder on a Mac, as an "initial" program, which would run automatically every time the system started up. The program then copied itself onto any bootable disk which was opened. [4]
Damage caused
Brandow intended the virus to be benign, giving a friendly message and causing no harm. However a bug in the virus caused infected Mac II computers to undergo system crashes before this date. It also caused a great deal of anxiety among users who found that their computers were infected with an unwanted program the nature of which was unknown. The virus infected Aldus software's FreeHand, and Aldus had to recall thousands of copies of FreeHand, leading them to threaten legal action.
Brandow's Attitudes to the virus
Brandow persistently called himself the "author" of the virus, but in fact he did not write it: he commissioned it to be written, and the virus internally contained the name "Drew Davidson". He never apologised, and always indicated that he was proud of his action. When confronted by users who had been adversely affected by the virus he used to reply with an argument about the level of handgun ownership in the United States.
References
- ^ Bocij, Paul The Dark Side of the Internet: Protecting Yourself and Your Family from Online Criminals, Praeger Publishers Inc 2006, ISBN-10: 027598575X, ISBN-13: 978-0275985752
- ^ http://www.cknow.com/cms/vtutor/chapter-8-macmag.html
- ^ http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/6.44.html
- ^ http://thermopyle.tripod.com/sladehis.htm