Viruses are not always digital. AlwaysBeta (via 43 Folders) presents the case of a broken adapter that breaks any connector that is connected to it. An intereseting piece of adaptation in the most static of all worlds: the material.
What I had discovered, in essence, was a mechanical virus. It infects Mac laptops and speads via the DVI adapters. An infected adapter will infect any computer that uses it, causing that computer to infect any adapters that it comes into contact with in the future, etc.
alwaysBETA » The Tale of the Mechanical Virus
In the comments another more troubling instance is mentioned:
Shorted Firewire ports.If a firewire cable is inserted upside down (easy on most any PC, or any G4 tower), it will kill the port on both the device and the computer. In some cases, one side of the connection will become viral, killing any port you plug it into.I’ve seen four outbreaks: the first had a DV camera kill Firewire ports on a lab full of Powermac G4s, the second (a WiebeTech drive) and third (a DV camera) killed only the ports on the devices, and the fourth (a LaCie drive) killed 3 firewire ports on two iMac G4s before I caught it.
technorati tags:virus, hardware, technology
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