I remember there was a virus that had a tiny cat on the screen and it would chase your mouse cursor. Once it catches your mouse cursor, the computer would crash. It was freaking awesome.
That’s based on a harmless Unix game that you can install forks of which on modern day Linux as well, by the way
What’s the name of the game?
The original was just neko. It probably hasn’t been maintained in forever though.
There is a webneko that you can embed on your website:
https://webneko.net/
It’s just Linux. It chases you and your mouse throughout the fediverse, and when it catches you and you install it, it crashes your computer because the mouse drivers are written by a 12 year old with undiagnosed ADHD.
I’ve seen 12 year old adhd or autistic kid writing better software than most tech companies
I have had far more driver issues on windows on linux things just work lol
Does windows still reinstall drivers for some hardware when you plug them in, regardless of whether you installed them previously?
I think i have had that happen with maybe usbs but idk about anything else
there was one called neko on windows
Reminds me of Rensenware.
What’s it called? I wanna see this
I don’t remember what it was called. I was in grade school. I just remembered it was the funniest thing.
man i miss these days.
These days not only would it open your CD drive, it would open your tax documents, your crypto wallet, your account cookies, probably even your banking information.
The modern internet fucking sucks dude.
Put the rose tinted glasses to one side. We still had harmful viruses back in the day, difference is these days you are storing more private information “online” so the effect of compromise is larger.
i’m mostly just sad that the funny side of malicious software is gone.
There’s no more funny malware. It’s all ransomware and stealers.
There’s no more funny malware.
That depends who gets infected.
You or me infected by malware? No thanks!
Egon Mark infected by malware? Absolute hilarity!
i mean yeah, but that’s only situationally funny.
deleted by creator
The thing is, harmful apps are now difficult to detect compared to years ago. The hackers prefer to get the control of your device without ruining it.
There’s even extreme edgecases where a compromised machine being part of a botnet actually improves security because the malware shores up security to help itself remain persistent and not find itself removed/blocked by other malware or attackers
Vandalism became theft and kidnapping
Oh don’t worry, malicious .exe files were all over the forums back then.
u aren’t wrong.
How could I know, out of curiosity? I probably have the exe from the time period.
Try decompiling it.
Great question! Not really my area of expertise, but probably there are at least a couple of possible avenues. One is decompilation and/or disassembly and static analysis. (Basically use automated tools to reconstruct the original source code as best it can and then read that imperfect reconstruction of the source code to figure out what it does.) Another is isolating it (“air gap” – no network or connectivity to anything you care about) so you’re sure it can’t do any damage and running it with tools that record/report everything it does. (On Linux, one could use
straceand/or GDB. On Mac,dtrace. Not sure what the equivalent is for Windows programs running on Windows.)Actually, I guess another option could be to set up an isolated system, record a whole bunch of information about it before running the .exe then after running the .exe, examine it to see what you can find on the filesystem or in the registry or in RAM or whatever that might have changed. It wouldn’t catch everything, though. Like if it made a network connection or something but didn’t actually change anything on the filesystem, it might not leave any traces.
Whatever the case, it’d probably require some specialized tools and expertise. But it’d be an interesting project.
That last part, that’s what sandboxie is for
There are tracing programs that let you see when a program makes system calls to read and write files, control hardware, etc. It might be easiest to run it and see what it does in a VM sandbox. Process Monitor looks like a strace equivalent on windows.
Pretty sure this has been around since the mid 90s
I have a folder of “pranks” like these from way back and they were harmless but sure enough they fire off modern anti virus software.
I made one called “crash_bandicoot.exe” that opened the windows calculator in an infinite loop.
I had one of those, but it was just called putting something on the calculator key.
How about the one that launched a dialog box: “Do you have a small penis? Yes/No”, and if you moved your mouse near the “No” button, the button would run away around the screen?
Man, good times.
Odd, that button always worked for me.
I remember with mobile phones you’d have an app that was called shave or something like that.
It would play the sound of a shaving apparatus and you’d run your phone across your cheek pretending to shave
I remember a guy who tied his baby’s rocker to the drive and wrote code to open and close the CD drive repeatedly lol. Fun times.
Hmm. Did the motor last? It’s obviously not built to provide that much torque/force, although I can’t say for sure it would be damaged by it.
They don’t say how much the seat was being rocked.
Maybe just a couple of inches. Enough for babby to sleep.
Yeah, but the baby alone would weigh far more than the tray and disk ever would. And then they’re doing it over and over again for an extended period.
Just a little push from pops at the beginning.
And they didn’t say it was a long term solution. For all we know, the drive was going to be replaced the following week.
Oh, so you’re thinking he’d start it first, and then start the program to be perfectly synced with the period of the rocking? I suppose that could work, although it would be tricky to get the timing just right by hand, or it would be for me.
And they didn’t say it was a long term solution. For all we know, the drive was going to be replaced the following week.
Yeah, and it might have electronics that will handle the extra load just by virtue of properties of the standard parts. Like I said, I don’t know that it’s bad idea, but I do wonder.
I think you’re taking this whole thing too seriously.
People can do whatever they want for the lulz.
I know, but I’ve been nerdsniped. I’m not mad or something, lol.
An old fashioned meme but it checks out
good one!
I miss Macbarf…
I remember back when this was going around as
cokegift.exein the 90s.
