Any claims of Forceware 52.16 monitor damage yet?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Angry Rabbit
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A

Angry Rabbit

Well, where are they? A thread on rage3d.com traced how apparently 3
reports (one guy posted to 4 web forums) started the belief that the ATI
3.8 drivers could damage monitors. That same forum also references a
report of someone with a recent generation (GeForce 5900 series I
believe) board that claimed monitor damage as well after a software
change (obviously not ATI drivers). How long before some dude with a
defective monitor begins the whining?

If it is that easy, why hasn't a trojan been written to destroy monitors
by forcing repeated refresh rate changes and deliberately ignoring DDC
info? Why wait for this alleged accidental monitor damage to occur when
you can code for it deliberately? Easy to do if these claims are the
case--I would think especially easy under the architecture of Win95/98.
I want proof! Show me the trojan!

I want to email my enemies the monitor destroying trojan! Will ATI
Catalyst 3.8 and NVidia Forceware 52.16 not deliver unto us the Purger
of Inferior Monitors with Cheap Relays? A Final Solution to the Monitor
Problem is surely at hand, is it not?




Angry Rabbit with many CRTs
 
I find it hard to believe.
The vast majority of monitors made in the past 5-10years (it does vary from
one manufacturer to another), have inbuilt protection against 'out of
bounds' specification of horizontal or vertical refresh rate.
They just go into power saving mode if the refresh rate is too high.

It used to be a problem in the early late 80's and early 90's, but not now.
Interestingly, the a similar problem applied to old RLL and MFM hard drives.
Those old drives needed to be 'parked' before being shut off or moved. This
was accomplished with a program that sent the hard drives read/write head to
an un-used sector of the disk, so if the head did hit the disk, no data
would be lost, and no fragments of magnetic coating got knocked off (which
would then act like a little bullet ricocheting around an operational
drive). The sector that was used to park the head was typically the very
first or last on the disk.
Some smart are wondered what would happen if he wrote a program to send the
head to a non existent sector...
It worked like this. Say a hard disk has 5200 sectors. The nasty software
would send a command to the drive that told it to send it's head to sector
9999. You can pretty much imagine what happened. Head snapped its arm and
bounced around the rotating drive like a 1 mile wide meteorite bouncing
across a city....
Ouch.
Thankfully IDE put paid to all that nastiness.
There were tricks like this for all sorts of computer gear. Printers were a
favourite, as were most peripherals with moving parts. The faster they
moved, the better.

;-)
 
Well, where are they?
Click to expand...

http://lists.bilkent.edu.tr/cih/alert.htm
IMPORTANT: Anyone running Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 should
read this notice.
This June, a new virus called Win32/CIH (or PE_CIH) first appeared,
and it was discovered on Bilkent campus machines in late December. The
virus infects Windows 95 and Windows 98 executable files, but NOT
files on Windows NT or any Macintosh or UNIX / Linux computers.

The virus contains highly destructive code, which triggers on the 26th
of April. Some versions, believed to become active on the 26th of each
month are also mentioned in literature.

The virus code attempts to overwrite the flash-BIOS in infected
machines. If the flash-BIOS is write-enabled (and most Pentium powered
PCs have a writable flash-BIOS), the overwriting renders the machine
UNUSABLE because it will no longer have a BIOS. The effect can be
easily described as a hardware problem and any hardware damage caused
by the virus is not covered under manufacturers' warranties.


http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/1881.html
In the past 6 months I have been witness to 2 comps that have suffered
actual hardware damage from viruses,

http://www.pcmech.com/show/os/188/2
Viruses don't infect computer hardware such as monitors or computer
chips; they only infect software. They can, however, damage certain
types of hardware such as flash-memory.
 
p.s.

< Quote >

Mandrake Linux 9.2 Installation Notes

* Potential hardware damage doing install with LG-based CD-ROM
drives

[...]

Error scenario: Installing 9.2 and being told unable to install the
base
system and subsequent reboot reveals that CD-ROM is physically dead.
Why: According to LG Electronics, their ODD (Optical Disc Drive)
products do not support Linux nor do they test with Linux.
Unfortunately, many Dell computers (possibly others) come with these
CD-ROM drives.
Solution: Currently there is no solution or work-around for this
issue;
it is still under investigation. Damage occurs even when doing a
network
install. At this point, please do not install Mandrake Linux 9.2 on
any
computer containing a LG-based CD-ROM or it will damage your CD-ROM!
We
are actively looking for a solution to this problem.

[...]

</ Quote >

source: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/errata.php3#badlg
 
http://lists.bilkent.edu.tr/cih/alert.htm
IMPORTANT: Anyone running Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 should
read this notice.
This June, a new virus called Win32/CIH (or PE_CIH) first appeared,
and it was discovered on Bilkent campus machines in late December. The
virus infects Windows 95 and Windows 98 executable files, but NOT
files on Windows NT or any Macintosh or UNIX / Linux computers.

The virus contains highly destructive code, which triggers on the 26th
of April. Some versions, believed to become active on the 26th of each
month are also mentioned in literature.

The virus code attempts to overwrite the flash-BIOS in infected
machines. If the flash-BIOS is write-enabled (and most Pentium powered
PCs have a writable flash-BIOS), the overwriting renders the machine
UNUSABLE because it will no longer have a BIOS. The effect can be
easily described as a hardware problem and any hardware damage caused
by the virus is not covered under manufacturers' warranties.


http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/1881.html
In the past 6 months I have been witness to 2 comps that have suffered
actual hardware damage from viruses,

http://www.pcmech.com/show/os/188/2
Viruses don't infect computer hardware such as monitors or computer
chips; they only infect software. They can, however, damage certain
types of hardware such as flash-memory.
Click to expand...

Not quite the same thing. You can easily reprogram the BIOS chip with a
EEPROM writer. The chip isn't damaged. This is no different than a virus
that reformats your hard drive. There is no "hardware" problem just
because malicious software invokes various IDE commands to rewrite your
drive. There is no hardware damage and the system has worked as DESIGNED.
Maybe people should think about how smart it is to have software-
reprogrammable ROMs instead of hardware jumpers on the motherboard that
need to be moved to enable EEPROM writes. If you have no PROM writer,
you're hosed and will have to implore the manufacturer for a fresh BIOS,
but I see nothing here where you can destroy a BIOS chip (ie it fails to
write/erase with a EEPROM writer).

I still await the deliberately programmed trojan that will destroy
monitors. Something that allegedly happens by accident with Forceware or
Catalyst drivers should be doable to code intentionally into a trojan for a
catastrophic attack that destroys monitors. (Were VESA 2.0 BIOS upgrades
in the 1990's for PCI cards ever accused of destroying monitors??) This
trojan should be able to destroy monitors of multiple brands including ones
that are manufactured well, not just a few brands (like the LG CDROMs
mentioned in the other post). The other post with Linux & the LG CDROM
does get closer to the spirit of what I'm getting at, though that sounds
like a problem with the manufacture of the CDROM rather than the Linux,
obviously.

Show me the monitor destroying trojan! What driver programmers have
(allegedly) done by accident, must therefore be doable on purpose!

Angry Rabbit
 
Not quite the same thing. You can easily reprogram the BIOS chip with a
EEPROM writer. The chip isn't damaged. This is no different than a virus
that reformats your hard drive. There is no "hardware" problem just
because malicious software invokes various IDE commands to rewrite your
drive. There is no hardware damage and the system has worked as DESIGNED.
Maybe people should think about how smart it is to have software-
reprogrammable ROMs instead of hardware jumpers on the motherboard that
need to be moved to enable EEPROM writes. If you have no PROM writer,
you're hosed and will have to implore the manufacturer for a fresh BIOS,
but I see nothing here where you can destroy a BIOS chip (ie it fails to
write/erase with a EEPROM writer).
Click to expand...

So you don't think it's possible for someone to write a virus that
writes to the registry and force your monitor to do 200mhz refresh
rate on the next reboot? I think it is possible and that was the point
of my post. But of course it would only work on monitors that don't
have protection circuitry.
 
Show me the monitor destroying trojan! What driver programmers have
(allegedly) done by accident, must therefore be doable on purpose!

Angry Rabbit
Click to expand...

p.s. Just because it hasn't been done yet does not mean it is not
doable.
 
So you don't think it's possible for someone to write a virus that
writes to the registry and force your monitor to do 200mhz refresh
rate on the next reboot?
Click to expand...

No, because no videocard supports 200MHz refresh rates. Besides, any monitor
worth a damn will simply display an "out of scan range" or similar message
if you feed it too high a refresh rate (mine does and it was manufactured in
nineteen ****ing ninety eight!).

If a high refresh rate kills a monitor it's because it was a shitty monitor.
Complain to the manufacturer, this is something that is clearly unavoidable
if it is properly designed.
 
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