• Michelangelo virus turns 25 today

    Posted on March 6, 2017 at 07:49 CST by • Comment in the Forums

    If you were around 25 years ago, you may recall the Michelangelo virus, which was timed to launch on March 6, 1992.

    It turned into a dud, but started an enormous industry.

    Here’s how I described  it in Windows XP Timesaving Techniques for Dummies, Jan. 2005:

    The first really big virus

    The world changed when John McAfee appeared on the Today Show in March, 1992, and told Bryant Gumbel that the Michelangelo virus infected more than a million PCs. One week later, the PC world was supposed to end. All the major wire services ran alarming predictions — millions of dollars were forecast to be lost in the wake of the largest computer virus of all time.

    The Big Day arrived and . . . nothing. A few thousand systems got clobbered, here and there, but Michelangelo turned into a dud of astonishing proportions. McAfee made millions. The wire services fell silent. We all got huckstered. Does history repeat itself in Internet time?

    Now McAfee is… what is he doing nowadays, anyway?

    Other
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