My friend's mom wants me to crash her computer with a virus. Where can I find one?

Food?

It's odd, I know. She has this 5 year old Compaq laptop that is on the brink of self-destruction, and she wants it gone. I told her I would re-format it for her, while she said that'd be great, she's asked me to find a virus that can cripple the machine. This is not going to be used in any sort of harmful or illegal way. Again, I am doing this by her request.

With that said, where can I find a virus that can all but destroy her computer? I have a Mac, so I assume that I should be able to download such virus without it infecting my computer.

Oh, she has Windows 2000.

Brodo Faggins

Start hitting up all the porn sites as fast as you can on her computer.

silence1186

Getting a virus just sounds dangerous. Why can't you just throw the computer out?

saltiness

Why not reformat it and donate it to a school or something. This seems rather wasteful.

Thanatos

There aren't that many viruses out there that are really all that dangerous for your computer. Most of the malware anymore is just spam-bots and ad-bots.

Muriden

Would writing a script that would start deleting files in the Win32 folder accomplish what you want?

Ruckus

This request makes little or no sense. Explain why she would want to purposely infect her own computer again?

Sarcastro

This sounds weird. Why cripple it? There is no purpose to such a thing.

Why not just reformat it and say she got Chernobyl or something.

Also, if you have access to the machine itself, you don't need a virus. Just start popping off system files (those would be in the i386 folder and in <root>\Windows\: Killing off the .dll's would do the same sort of thing.

For death by natural causes, naughty porn while saying yes to every download/popup install request would certainly do the trick. It wont generally 'kill' the machine (system failure), but would most likely render it unusable.

JPArbiter

it is called an electromagnet, just over it over the machine and it is as good as destroyed

Ruckus

If you want to do that, just stick a fridge magnet to the harddrive.

Janin

Install Windows Vista oh ho ho!

Seriously, this sounds silly. if the concern is destroying sensitive data, then take the hard disk to a data disposal company and they'll throw it in a wood chipper. If you want to see a system break in new and interesting ways, set up a VMWare machine and start ripping out system files.

whuppins

Yeah, you need to clarify why she wants the virus. I'm guessing it's because she's paranoid about people getting ahold of the HD and recovering her data after it's gone. In that case, just do as others have said: Remove the drive and take a magnet to that bitch.

The drive, not your friend's mom.

Muriden

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Get a floppy or CD, put dban on it. Stick into machine, reboot, run.
It'll take about an hour to scramble up all the bits on the plater and then zero out the drive. This will remove all data on the drive.

Scooter

How close is it to self-destruction, really? Might as well just give her $20 for it or something and keep it.

Otherwise, just smash it with a hammer really good?

thundercake

I don't know anything about viruses, but Comet Cursor effectively killed my last computer :P

Everywhereasign

Why would someone want a virus to kill their computer? It either runs in the background and then the computer freezes and windows won't reboot. Or it runs on startup and windows won't run. Either way it's super anticlimactic.

Safety goggles and a nine-pound-sledge however. That's fun for the whole family. But like others have said. These things can be recycled if they are in working order.

Maybe you could get your friends Mom to explain exactly why she wants her computer crippled, rather then the data just destroyed. I'm not asking for a note from her saying she wants you to do this, but... yeah.

Khavall

Go Office space on it! Do it do it do it do it.

altmann

This sounds bogus. Sounds more like you came up with an excuse to get some virus that would destroy a friends computer or an ex-girlfriend or her new boyfriend. Sorry, but i don't buy it.

Scooter

Yea, I think it goes without saying that even if we thought it wasn't a terrible idea, no one here is exactly gonna link you up to a machine-killing virus.

DamienThorn

If she has genuinely sensitive information on it, just have at it with a drill. Putting a few holes in the patters will ensure that no one will ever read the data again.

Heliosphan

JPArbiter wrote: »

it is called an electromagnet, just over it over the machine and it is as good as destroyed

FUN FACT!!!

A magnet that is capable of wipeing a HDD is also capable of ripping out a man's pacemaker.

IreneDAdler

Yeah... she sounds like she's computer-illiterate and talking out of her ass. Ask her what purpose she is trying to achieve and explain that a virus isn't going to achieve it. There are any number of things out there that will do secure erases of harddrives. I personally like UBCD4Win. It's a bootable disk that has a bunch of secure-erase programs on it. Just run one of those programs on her laptop and then pass a giant magnet over it or something.

I guess it's possible that it's a work-issued computer, in which case she might have to convince certain supervisors that the computer is kaput before she gets issued a new one. I'd probably stay out of that one if I were you.

Wezoin

DamienThorn wrote: »

If she has genuinely sensitive information on it, just have at it with a drill. Putting a few holes in the patters will ensure that no one will ever read the data again.

Actually, thats not completely true. Back in the days of the show The Screensavers they interviewed a guy from a data recovery center that said they can recover data even from a hard drive that has been ground to dust, and that the only way to really make data impossible to recover is to overwrite it with garbage (much like the program linked way above would do)

embrik

Just throw DBAN on a CD or floppy, boot to it and wipe the drive with one of the wipe methods, including DoD and RCMP standards. Tell her it was hit with the DBAN virus

Anyway, there are very few actual computer viruses that do any kind of major damage, and aside from crafting one yourself that damages what you want, you'll have a hard time finding something that really wrecks the entire computer. Those types of viruses are very old, and a lot of them were designed in the DOS days. Peruse the Symantec Threat Explorer for lists of viruses. Note that the damage level for a very large percentage of them is low.

Xaquin

altmann wrote: »

This sounds bogus. Sounds more like you came up with an excuse to get some virus that would destroy a friends computer or an ex-girlfriend or her new boyfriend. Sorry, but i don't buy it.

ViolentChemistry

What the fuck, retards? No, you can't come to H/A asking for malicious software for the purpose of destroying "your friend's mom's" computer.

Pheezer

This is either bogus or completely fucking retarded. In either case, this was linked previously:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

USE IT.

It is capable of performing a DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe. This is generally considered to be a standard of deletion so severe that even the best forensic methods will be incapable of recovering any data. And by forensic methods I mean taking it apart and using an MRI to try to find the ghosts of bits that were. This is the standard that the American Department of Defense uses to ensure that recycled hard drives are not a vector for confidential information leaks.


The software at that site is also completely free to download and use. If you are disposing of or recycling a computer and want to protect your information, use that.

Pheezer

PS VC maybe next time don't unlock the thread right after I've locked it :P