Re: Can a computer virus kill the CPU?


Casper H.S. *** wrote:
"w_tom" <w_tom1@xxxxxxx> writes:

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?
Sebastian's reasons for how a virus can harm hardware are easy to
implement if viruses can damage hardware. Therefore numerous examples
should exist. Why does it know it can happen and yet does not provide
any example? Are virus writers too moral to harm hardware?

Because the virus writes make money of their viruses by
not hurting their victims too much.

They strive for symbiosis; the incentive is $$; most virus now are
used for:
DDoS zombies
SPAM bots
popup adds.


Dead computers don't make money.

The second reason is the diversity of PCs; you will need a specific
exploit to kill PCs for each of:

- different FLASH chips on the motherboard
- different harddisk types

and a very specific one for those systems which require the OS
to "keep things cool". And the writing of such viruses costs
actual hardware; you can't test it without breaking actual pieces.
of hardware. So you need a great variety of systems to make even
a little bit of impact and you need to be willing to destroy it.

So it only makes sense for the weapons labs of nation states to
develop such killer viruses. Making and testing one will set
you back many thousands.


So basically people (except perhaps for the military) have lost
interest
in wanton destruction and simple vandalism and have now decided to
go and exploit systems for money? Why didn't many HW-destroying
viruses exist when people still made 'em for destruction?

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.

.