Byte Bandit is a
boot sector computer virus created for the
Amiga personal computer. It first appeared in January 1988.
In contrast to the feared Amiga viruses like the infamous
Lamer Exterminator and
SADDAM
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
, Byte Bandit was not destructive. It just spread automatically from system to system.
Byte Bandit made no attempt to disguise itself as modern viruses, trojans, and worms do. While it naturally over-wrote the bootblock, it also hooked into the system, remaining reset-resident and causing system data corruption and system failures. The virus increments a copy counter every time it writes itself to a disk, which is in the text string "Virus by Byte Bandit in 9.87. Number of copys:" which also gives a date of September 1987 for the creation, as well as the assumed name of the programmer.
External links
* http://www.sca.ch/ – Swiss Cracking Association's homepage
Byte Bandit-Virus descriptionat the Amiga Virus Encyclopedia
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Amiga viruses
Hacking in the 1980s