Ignorant question about asm virii

[Tony99]

Hi,

I was concerned if assembly virii can permanently ruin hardware(motherboards, harddrives, or anything). The reason I ask is because I've heard that yes it can and no it can't. Anyway, no flames please it's an honest question.

 

[jnicks]

There were substantial runors in the 1990s that some viruses could trash color monitors ot color displsy cards.

Other than that I have not seen any writeups of doing worse than altering BIOS or trashing your data on the HD, which is bad enough.

Since it is impossible to prove a negative assertion, e.g. I cannot disprove the existence of green polar bears, one can only say, "Not seen, at least uncommon.".

J, Inventor/designer Quarantine A-V, 1988, Best of Yearr, LAN Magaxine.

 

[2ffat]

A virus cannot affect hardward unless it can infect the software that runs the hardware. ROMs cannot be infected but PROMs and other rewritable ROMs can be. Software like BIOS can be infected because it is stored in such devices. A good place to look is

http://www.vmyths.com

for common misconceptions about virii. James P. Cottingham

I am the Unknown lead by the Unknowing.
I have done so much with so little
for so long that they think I am now
qualified to do anything with nothing.

 

[AVChap]

I agree with 2ffat. The closest virus that comes to mind would be W32/CIH, which flashes the CMOS of an infected machine. Even then, the author had a very good grasp of the hw since he was working in a PC HW maker.

AVChap