78 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
78 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Article Written for Crisnews By:
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Childe Roland
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South Africa
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30/10/1993
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South African Computer Virus Scene
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As early as 1988 South Africa saw wide spread occurrences of
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computer viruses in the form of the Bouncing Ball virus (also known
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as the Ping Pong virus) as well as the Jerusalem virus.
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By the end of 1989 the Bouncing Ball virus was very common and could
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be found on many machines at local universities and technikons. The
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local media frequently ran articles on computer viruses.
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In 1990 two companies emerged as leaders in the anti virus field, one
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being Business Software Solutions, representing the Dr Solomons anti
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virus product and the other one being Dynamic Solutions,representing
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the McAfee Associates anti virus product. Both of which offered
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and are still offering telephonic hot-line services.
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XT computer were being phased out and with it went the Bouncing Ball
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virus that makes use of some XT reserved functions. (which do not work
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properly on AT and 386 class computers)
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In its place came the Stoned and the Michelangelo viruses. To this
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day, these viruses remains the most wide spread in South Africa.It
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should be added that South-Africa was aslo subjected to the wide-
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spread Michaelangelo scare which in the end just fizzed out, leaving
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many to wonder who generated this.
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Towards the end of 1991, local computer viruses started appearing in
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the form of the Poem,Pathunt,Civil Service,337 and Pregnant viruses,
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most of which were written by computer science scholars or students
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at local universities.
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The Bulgarian Virus Exchange BBS also had an impact on local virus
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writers and researchers with samples and source code becoming freely
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available to them.As far as is known only one South-African had free
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access there.
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In 1992 a Cape Town based VX BBS called Logix Probe was established
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but due to local pressure from BBS users as well as the Media it
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was closed some 4 months later. Various other VX BBS sprang up all
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over the country, but with the exception of the Virus Polytechnic,
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run by Radix none of these have remained running for more than a
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few weeks. It should be noted that the Logic Probe's adverse publi-
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city was the work of some of the AV people in this country after it
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was widely publicised on the local Fido network. Virus Polytechnic
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limits its users severely and thus avoids wide publicity.
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Numerous other companies jumped on the band wagon and started
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selling anti - virus software including Computer Horizons,
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representing Central Point, HNR Computers representing Norton anti
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virus and Lionsoft representing EliaShim.
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In February 1993, the Exebug virus took South Africa by storm, and
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within 2-3 months became the most spread virus, followed closely
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by Stoned and Michelangelo. Both the Exebug.2 and the Exebug.hooker
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are common and resulted in wide spread data loss in March 1993.
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To the best of my knowledge, South African law has no provision
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covering computer viruses or computer security.
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