4 ms·

Michelangelo and similar viruses only activate when you boot from the disk it's on. Insert a disk with Michelangelo in a running system, then format the disk (m

Michelangelo and similar viruses only activate when you boot from the disk it's on. Insert a disk with Michelangelo in a running system, then format the disk (make sure you overwrite the boot sector), all OK. The operating systems of the time didn't have any autoplay functionality that could be exploited by viruses. I guess in theory viruses could have exploited things like buffer overflows in the OS code that reads the file allocation table or directories, but I've never heard of such a thing, and Michelangelo and similar boot viruses certainly were not that advanced.

tgv 4y ago
Autoplay is as at least as old as Windows 3.1. A file called "autoexec.bat" would be executed on mounting, IIRC (not a Windows-person myself).
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  Not at all. Autoplay is new to the win 95 shell. And the idea of "mounting" is absolutely alien to a DOS system which can't even tell when a disk is inserted or not on a device. DOS' shell would run autoexec.bat when booting but only the one from the boot volume.
- anthk 4y ago
  That's autorun.inf, not autoexec.bat.
seanc 4y ago
Back in the 80's few machines had hard drives, and often only one floppy. So if you put your disk in the drive and fired up the machine then bang, you were infected. Also, lots of machines with hard drives were configured to boot from floppy by default. Few floppies had working boot sectors, so most people never noticed. Until they put an infected disk into A:, turned on the computer and saw chaos ensue.
- roelschroeven 4y ago
  Yes, that's right, that's why I said to insert it in a running system.
mietek 4y ago
There were plenty of Macintosh viruses that spread this way, such as the WDEF/MDEF/CDEF families. > Infects the Desktop file used by the Finder. … Spread through sharing disks, as every Mac disk includes a Desktop file. It is not necessary to run a program to spread this virus; simply mounting the disk is enough for it to infect the Desktop file of every disk mounted on the Mac. https://lowendmac.com/2015/classic-mac-os-viruses/ https://lowendmac.com/2015/classic-mac-os-viruses/

tgv 4y ago

Autoplay is as at least as old as Windows 3.1. A file called "autoexec.bat" would be executed on mounting, IIRC (not a Windows-person myself).

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
Not at all. Autoplay is new to the win 95 shell. And the idea of "mounting" is absolutely alien to a DOS system which can't even tell when a disk is inserted or not on a device. DOS' shell would run autoexec.bat when booting but only the one from the boot volume.
anthk 4y ago
That's autorun.inf, not autoexec.bat.

seanc 4y ago

Back in the 80's few machines had hard drives, and often only one floppy. So if you put your disk in the drive and fired up the machine then bang, you were infected. Also, lots of machines with hard drives were configured to boot from floppy by default. Few floppies had working boot sectors, so most people never noticed. Until they put an infected disk into A:, turned on the computer and saw chaos ensue.

roelschroeven 4y ago
Yes, that's right, that's why I said to insert it in a running system.

mietek 4y ago

There were plenty of Macintosh viruses that spread this way, such as the WDEF/MDEF/CDEF families. > Infects the Desktop file used by the Finder. … Spread through sharing disks, as every Mac disk includes a Desktop file. It is not necessary to run a program to spread this virus; simply mounting the disk is enough for it to infect the Desktop file of every disk mounted on the Mac. https://lowendmac.com/2015/classic-mac-os-viruses/ https://lowendmac.com/2015/classic-mac-os-viruses/