Its my first post here, so... hello there. Please excuse any grammar mistakes. Anyways, lets get started. Some days ago browsing Twitter, a user i see around quite often had posted something that intrigued me a lot. In the post, they described that one day they were browsing the internet as a kid looking for dog pictures to download. OP said that they downloaded a picture of an Afghan Hound that according to them contained some sort of malware, because as they opened the file, the screen went black, and suddenly an image of a child in the middle of an war zone appeared, while a funeral march played alongside, then their computer turned off (Ik, this sounds like a cliché creepypasta). OP also stated that this virus could have been created during the War in Afghanistan (Which means this probably happened somewhere in the 2000s, maybe early 2010s). As i saw this post, i had several questions. Did this virus really exist? Could it be just a confusing memory from OP? Was it just a troll? Out of morbid curiosity, i tried searching for keywords to see if something could appear, but nothing that at least resembled computer viruses showed up. So i decided to post here because maybe this virus is really lost or has its existence unproven, as the post is the only report about it. If anyone has memories of this strange malware, please comment, i would like to know if it existed. Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the Lost Media Forum! As for this topic, I will be honest idk if viruses count as lost media. But this sounds interesting I hope you are going to be able to find it!
It's better to piss in the sink than to sink in the piss.
Could you please cite where you read about this? It's not as useful to have a secondhand description.
While it may sound cliche, it's not out of the question for 2000's viruses to pull stuff like this. After all, YouTubers like danooct1 have basically made entire channels out of malware that presents itself in unusual ways. Displaying an image and turning the PC off are things that aren't difficult to program and within reason for a malicious software to do. Back in the Windows XP days I got a virus once that played radio ads every once in a while. Stuff like this doesn't really happen as much these days because everyone just wants to ransomware or cryptomine now, but back then there was a lot more variety so it could definitely be a real thing.
But, this really isn't enough detail, and searching for a virus would be particularly difficult. There's inherent risk involved, of course - anyone who wants to test would need to be extra careful and have the necessary tech savvy not to infect their computer or network when detonating the virus. It's also possible the virus has strange conditions so the payload might not detonate in all circumstances - many viruses will persist silently on the system for a while before activating to make the cause less obvious, which could make the virus hard to identify. Viruses are also quite intentionally made more difficult to find over time as they get erased automatically by file upload services. Most cloud storage, quite reasonably, perform virus scans on all uploads now and will not let you download the file without some extra effort, or even at all. Probably your best bet would be to search through antivirus databases, as AVs need to meticulously document malware in order to be able to detect them, assigning them names and categories.