Virus Question

kyleboy77

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Joined

Jul 9, 2002

Location

Bridgman, MI 49106

• Dec 24, 2003

• #1

Is there any type of virus that could destroy my computer's... I'm just wondering

 

pranks7er

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Joined

Dec 15, 2003

Location

Northern Ireland

• Dec 24, 2003

• #2

and why do you want to know about such a virus?

 

su root

Senior Member, --, I teach people how to read your

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Joined

Aug 25, 2001

Location

Ontario, Canada

• Dec 24, 2003

• #3

kyleboy7 said:

Is there any type of virus that could destroy my computer's... I'm just wondering

Click to expand...

Destroy them how? Physically? There are some old ones that may still work, but it's very unlikely that you'll catch one like that. If you mean just mess up your OS install or something, then yeah, lots of them.

You can do more virus research here:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html

 

A

amazon10x

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Joined

Feb 15, 2003

Location

College Park, MD

• Dec 25, 2003

• #4

I suppose a virus could change your refresh rate on your monitor too high and waste that and I believe it is possible for it to edit your BIOS and overclock your CPU at ungodly speeds and burn it to pieces. But I haven't heard of any viruses that can do that.

 

OP

kyleboy77

Member

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Joined

Jul 9, 2002

Location

Bridgman, MI 49106

• Dec 25, 2003

• Thread Starter
• #5

I was just wondering If such a virus existed

 

XWRed1

Senior Member

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Joined

Oct 31, 2001

• Dec 25, 2003

• #6

Any modern monitor should be safe from death-by-refresh.

Overclocking maybe... but that'd be specific to a motherboard, and even then, the computer would probably lock and fail to run long before it'd cook itself.

 

mbentley

Gloriously Lead, Overclockix Chief Architect

Joined

Sep 26, 2002

Location

Indianapolis, IN

• Dec 26, 2003

• #7

for the most part, there are no viruses that can cause any more physical damage than normal wear and tear... i know there used to be a virus that could damage hard drives where it would cause the read head to slam back and forth, causing it to break eventually, but that has been long since blocked as a way of attack...

 

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

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Joined

Mar 13, 2001

• Dec 26, 2003

• #8

isnt there a type that F's the bios

doesnt really ruin anything but its a pain in the but to get a new bios chip

 

su root

Senior Member, --, I teach people how to read your

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Joined

Aug 25, 2001

Location

Ontario, Canada

• Dec 26, 2003

• #9

Crash893 said:

isnt there a type that F's the bios

doesnt really ruin anything but its a pain in the but to get a new bios chip

Click to expand...

In the old days, there were viruses like that, but nowadays, flashing is too vendor-specific. Besides, viruses nowadays tend to look for # of infections as a goal, and not necessarily the amount damage caused... who hears about a virus that formats 300 people's harddrives vs. something like blaster?

 

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

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Joined

Mar 13, 2001

• Dec 26, 2003

• #10

yea but the question is " is there" not how popular it is

although you bring up an intresting point

the way i see it there is more of a shift from computer based virus's to the interent based worms that exploite things that everyone has in comon like security holes in windows.