Virus Question

[vassil3427]

I saw this story here about a new virus called "witty" They claim in the article that it causes hard drives to fail. I was just curious, does it cause the drive to physically fail, as in a head crash, or does it merely corrupt the OS? Because in the story they talk about the virus as if its something that totally destroys a pc..reinstalling an OS on a few hundred computers at a single company might be time consuming, but its not a total loss as the article claims it is....

 

[Rick]

Nowhere in the article was it mentioned (or that I noticed) that hard disks fail physically. It looks just like a corrupted file system, which is common enough without a virus.

Software cannot damage hardware physically, with the exception of rewriting firmware.. Which is still technically software related.

 

[StormBringer]

While the elusive "HDD destroying Virus" makes for interesting hoaxes and generates tons of forwarded emails that are entertaining to laugh at, it just ain't so. I agree with Rick on this, filesystem corruption is what that sounds like to me.

On a similar note, I reveived a few emails last week telling of a new virus that could physically destroy a HDD, making it unwritable. It was interesting and probably believable to many, but it was a fairly obvious work of pure fiction.
Below is the text from one of them:

A new virus has just been discovered that has been classified
by Microsoft as the most destructive ever! This virus was
discovered yesterday afternoon by McAfee and Norton.
No vaccine has yet been developed! This virus simply destroys
"Sector Zero" from the hard disk, where vital information for its
functioning are stored.

This virus acts in the following manner: It sends itself
automatically to all contacts on your list with the title "A Card
For You".

As soon as the supposed virtual card is opened, the computer
freezes so that the user has to reboot. When the ctrl+alt+del keys
or the reset button are pressed, the virus destroys "Sector Zero",
thus permanently destroying the hard disk.
Yesterday in just a few hours this virus caused panic in New
York, according to news broadcast by CNN. This alert was
received by an employee of Microsoft itself.
So don't open any mails with subject: "A Virtual Card for
You." As soon as you get the mail, delete it!! Even if you
know the sender!!!
*Please pass this mail to all of your friends.*
Forward this to everyone in your address book. I'm sure
most people, like myself, would rather receive this notice 25
times than not at all.

 

[Rick]

It's interesting they mentioned "sector 0". That made me think of something that used be a true (heresay) awhile back..

If you attempted to "low level" format a drive without using the proper utility, you would also erase the commands it needs to function (firmware, I suppose).

However, this is no longer valid. "Low-level" formatting these days simply erases the user data area of the disk.

Again, this is just heresay.. I've never actually destoyed a drive by erasing the firmware.. But from what I understand, this used to be true.