Re: Can a computer virus kill the CPU?


Sebastian Gottschalk wrote:
w_tom wrote:

mike4ty4@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
But could such damage be done on the average PC nowadays by a
virus? Is there anything that a virus can do to the average PC that
could possibly force a replacement of hardware?

Notice those thousands of viruses doing so much hardware damage. The
glaring hole in Sebastian's comments is the one missing example after
so many hundreds of thousands of viruses. According to Sebastian, this
damage is easy. Fine. So where are the hundreds of examples?

The CIH virus overwrites the BIOS.

Sebastian's reasons for how a virus can harm hardware are easy to
implement if viruses can damage hardware. Therefore numerous examples
should exist.

Are you twisting "should" and "could".

Are virus writers too moral to harm hardware?

No. Basically, damaging the hardware violates the goal of a virus to a)
spread further b) use the computer's resources for other activies (sending
spam, DDos, ...). That's why no-one is interest in actually creating such
damage.

But can't the virus also be designed for pure wanton violence? What
happened to the pure-destruction viruses? Ie. it would spread and
spread, and then when a specific date rolls around, the "time bomb"
goes off and the computers are destroyed. And if you can get a
server's hardware to autodestruct, you do not need DDOS attacks...
Therefore destroying the hardware may not be very easy to do...
Viruses have been made that wipe hard disks, destroying any useful
information in the process, so why can't they destroy hardware that's
vulnerable? Perhaps hardware is tougher than you think? Also,
wouldn't a military virus that destroys hardware be a useful weapon,
to disable enemy computers? Perhaps maybe then such viruses DO
exist... it's just that the US Government doesn't want us to know about
them... Figures. The gov't is probably always 1-2 steps ahead of what
we know about. This of course leads me to an interesting question: Do
CPU manufacturers make "military editions" of their chips that are
faster
and better than the chips you can buy in the store?

.