CIH Author Confesses
The following article has been added on 29 April 1999.
A Taiwanese hacker, Chen Ing-Hau, a 24 year - old information engineer who
are now serving mandatory service admitted that he is the one creating the CIH virus
(Chernobyl) that destruct the whole computers.
Because of lack of complaints brought against him by the Taiwanese, Chen
will not be charged. Instead he has offered to help the victims to remove the virus from
the computer.
The virus was created by Chen while studying at Tatung Institute of
Technology. The virus which is also known as CIH is claimed by Chen that CIH is his
initials.
CIH
Virus
The following is an abstract from ZDNet that I have downloaded on the 27 April 1999.
The Windows CIH/Chernobyl virus found victims Monday, and had heartbreaking consequences.
There was a serious outbreak at Boston College, where many students preparing for final
exams discovered a semester's worth of work had been erased. Hundreds of computers in
Singapore and Hong Kong were also infected. But while such pockets of infections are
disastrous for the victims, a widespread outbreak of infections never materialized.
CIH vs. Melissa
In the post-Melissa virus world, virus companies drummed up attention in the days leading
up to the 26th, when CIH and its variants strike. The Melissa virus, which struck
last month, shocked the computer world when it forced companies around the country to shut
down e-mail
services.
CIH can cause irreparable damage to your computer, but only if you're running Windows 95
or Windows 98. First it erases the first megabyte of information on your hard drive, a
critical area which acts like a table to contents for your computer. Without it, your
computer can't find anything.
Then it attempts to alter your computer's BIOS, or Basic Input Output System. That renders
the PC basically useless.
But CIH and Melissa are very different beasts. Melissa was special because she was able to
spread so fast -- much faster than virus protection software could be updated. When
Melissa hit, on a Friday afternoon, no virus software could protect victims. But every
major virus package now has protection against CIH. So while CIH has more dangerous
consequences, chances of infection are infinitely smaller.
CIH victims feel the pain Students at Boston College apparently didn't heed warnings which
had been issued by the computer science department for weeks. The outbreak there was so
bad that a message at the school's computer help desk urges students to not turn on their
computers until Tuesday.
"Right after midnight people started calling in and saying 'My computer doesn't know
it's a computer anymore,' " said a BC computer lab employee. "Whoever said that
it's not a big deal, I'd like to have them come in here and look around."
Security firm Data Fellows Inc. told MSNBC that 100 machines in Hong Kong were infected,
along with 200 in Singapore and 10 "major companies" in India. A smattering of
machines in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, Malta, Finland, and New Zealand were also
hit,
according to spokesman Mikko Hypponen.
CIH can be contracted by downloading an infected file, inserting an infected floppy disk
into your machine, or by opening an infected e-mail attachment.
The so-called CIH or "space filler" virus originated in Asia last summer and
hits on the 26th of each month. A variant, CIH 1.2, that appears only once a year in
April, is the "most prevalent and dangerous" form of the virus, said Sal
Viveros, marketing vice president for Network Associates Inc., the largest computer
security company.
The virus is also called the Chernobyl virus because it's timed to go off on the
anniversary of the Russian nuclear accident, one of technology's worst disasters.
The virus is designed to hide from view by inserting itself into empty coding slots on a
computer's software utilities. Viruses are often detected because they use up extra space
on hard drives, but the "space filler" characteristic helps CIH avoid that
traditional method of detection. It can lie dormant for months before causing damage.
"People should make sure they have the latest antivirus software run on their
computers," said Bill Pollak, of Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute,
which runs the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT. The center has already prepared
an "incident" note on
its site.
For more information on the CIH Virus visit Symantec.
Windows Media Technology
Microsoft has recently unveil its newest version of Windows Media Technologies.
This latest technologies allows user to play audio in CD quality.
According to Microsoft, this new technologies plays audio with MP3 quality but the file
size is way smaller than MP3. This is an advantage to user with low capacity disk
space.
Besides, user can also encode video clips into audio file. Microsoft said that
this new technologies will improved piracy protection.
In order to play to it, user will have to download the latest Media Player from Microsoft. Winamp
has prepare a newer version of Winamp at which it will support this new format.
For more information check out Microsoft and Winamp.
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