Hard drive killers

OK this is starting to piss me off:

I'm looking up a few things right now since it's almost 7 AM and I'm pulling an all nighter to "change phases" and one thing I came across while reading on Wiki and a few other places was the Hard Drive Killer apps.

Now, I've heard of these before, and probably had a few copies back when I collected NetNastys a while back, but I didn't really use this stuff as I didn't have extra machines to check these out with at the time, so I have a few questions as googling seems to bring up basically nothing of interest:

1. How exactly does HDKP work? From what I've seen so far, it seems to just do what a secure erase would do, but in a different context... True? False? From what one person said in a thread I was looking at, it seems to perm - erase everything on a drive running certain Windows versions, which to me sounds like a quick as crap (I read it was 2 seconds) format on the drive itself and the MBR.

Is this the case?

2. I have a floppy disk that is basically all I have left of my collection...Which doesn't bother me because I had some REALLY nasty stuff and I quit drinking and computing INSTANTLY one night when I was moving some files to that floppy my friend hadn't zipped up....

You can imagine what happened when I went to put them on the floppy and accidentally double clicked on a .exe file and found the machine to be destroyed literally.

I have NO idea what this thing is to this day and now I'm starting to really wonder just what the hell it is.

The day I ran it on accident, this is what happened:

-The machine was running Windows 95 (My VERY first Computer ever, and when I got it, it was September of 1999, but I made do with it).

-I had Anti Virus and a Firewall installed.

-The machine was SLOW as crap and Windows 95 would take around 4 minutes to boot...

-This thing loaded MUCH faster

-When I noticed what I had accidentally double clicked on, my hand went for the power botton, but it was to late, what I saw as I was reaching for the power button was an MS-DOS prompt pop up on the screen and I do recall something about files being copied...

-I'm to big of a wuss to test it out because I STILL remember crying like a little girl when I turned the power back on and saw the machine asking for a system disk.. Windows was gone..

Now, the ODD part about all this is that I held onto that computer even though the next day I went and bought my HP which I still have to this day (Good God those are some fond memories) as I wanted to mess with it.

I opened it up and cleaned out the dust, took it outside to the garage and hooked it up, and decided what the hell I'll see if I can figure out what happened or if I can use it for Linux.

What I found out after that app ran:

- PC-DOS floppies still work after drawing on them

-A machine with a HD big enough for Windows 95 and God knows how many MP3s and videos and porn on it can all of a sudden say that you don't have enough space for Windows 3.1.... (I really don't understand this part, I got PC-DOS to install, and when I went to install Windows 3.1 on it and had tried wiping the drive, it said Windows 3.1 was to large for the drive...)

-Linux wouldn't install either... It seriously acted like the drive itself filled up and started killing itself off a gig at a time.

Has anyone heard of this ever? I tried quite a bit on this machine and never got anything other than PC-DOS to install, Linux and Windows wouldn't and the machine just kept saying it didn't have enough free space, yet I had wiped all of it.

I found this odd to say the least and ended up giving the MOBO to a friend's Dad and kept the RAM for decoration.

Anyway, if you've heard of what I was talking about, wtf is it? How does it do that to a machine that was working just fine? And so fast?

I still have the very floppy I was copying to that night... Needless to say I look at it sometimes, hold it in my hand, whisper sweet nothings... OK sorry, but you get the idea, I still wonder.

I currently have no machines running DOS or Windows 9X to look at it on, and I also don't have a small drive I could test it on as from what I saw it really hurt the HD.

Before I close:

I DO in fact understand just how hard it is to actually murder a drive with code... I know a hammer works better but I'm still stumped on this one.

And for people who don't think you can hurt hardware with software buy a machine from around 1997, install Linux or BSD on it, put it online, give me the IP and the root username and password and set up SSH. Once I get done "reconfiguring" your X.Org server WAY past what the monitor can handle and smoke starts flying you'll agree :)


Anyway, thanks all, and just a heads up our tech room is coming along now, the walls are black, and earlier we tested how to get the 0s and 1s up to make it look the best.

It sounds like the drive was low level formated very quickly and incorrectly.. which doesn't make sense because I've always been under the impression that Low Level Formats take a long time.

Thats the only thing I could think of that would cause the drive to be recognized as a different size and not be able to install anything other than PC DOS

If you still have the drive (probably not)...
What does/did the BIOS recognize the size as?
Did you try to low level format the drive to see if it would recognize it correctly?

if you fill up the drive...there aint much you can do about it...

Its fooked

MLF

Have you run fisk on the hard drive to see if it is partitioned correctly? It sounds like the hard drive has a very small active partition on it.

Stuart

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by morganlefay

if you fill up the drive...there aint much you can do about it...

Its fooked

MLF

---

yeah, but why was it getting filled up.

The idea of it being formatted incorrectly sounds likely, but then again I don't even know enough about how hard drives and formatting to make that call.

I remember at some point in the past after formatting and trying to re-install windows 98 getting a "not enough disk space" error. The **** was driving me nuts because I was just running the OS hours before and now i didn't have enough space?

Eventually my dad was able to figure it out, he told me what he did....but I forgot.

I still have the floppy but I don't think uploading the file is a good idea, or responsible of me, but it was VERY odd that after fdisk it said it was still full.... Formatting usually works on every drive. It's like it had physically damaged the drive which is what I found to be strange.

Quote:

---

And for people who don't think you can hurt hardware with software buy a machine from around 1997, install Linux or BSD on it, put it online, give me the IP and the root username and password and set up SSH. Once I get done "reconfiguring" your X.Org server WAY past what the monitor can handle and smoke starts flying you'll agree

---

gore, if I had a monitor I wouldn't mind blowing, I'd so take you up on that. I've heard of things like this before but always wondered if it was actually myth or not.

Can you offer any sort of enlightenment as to how in the world that's done? Does it force some device into overheating?

I've heard of ppl physically destroying monitors with inccorrect configuration but hard disk? How does that work? How do you fux up a hard drive w/ software...I don't get it.

Well...some of the older harddrives were pretty small...wouldnt take much to fill up...command on a floppy... copy C:\windows\*.* C:\ could do it

cause in the old days EVERYTHING was stored in there ;)

MLF

Oh the memory's.
the full name of the app is Hard Drive Killer Pro. It was a very very destructive trojan back in the day.

it had more then one use. I should still have a mirror of the original site with all the info.

I'll find what i can Gore and i'll send you a pm when done.. ;)

edit screw it here's a brief description of what this thing was able to do.. :D

Quote:

---

Hard Drive Killer Pro

The Hard Drive Killer Pro series of programs offer one the ability to fully and permanently destroy all data on any given Dos or Win3.x/9x/NT/2000 based system. In other words, 90% of the computers world wide.

The program, once executed, will start eating up the hard drive, and/or infect and reboot the hard drive within a few seconds. After rebooting, all hard drives attached to the system would be formatted (in an unrecoverable manner) within only 1 to 2 seconds, irregardless of the size of the hard drive. The program has reported to have caused physical damage to some hard drives (on many occasions). However, the program was not in any way designed to cause physical damage, only data. The outcome of the program depends on the version you download. We suggest you download the full HDKP 4.0 version. Then, once you are familiar with HDKP, you may experiment with HDKP 5.0 Beta.

---

So it was built to kill the drive, thus making the drive appear smaller and smaller over time until there was nothing left. :drink:


Oh and if any skiddie's are getting ideas, then feel free to search google and download what ever you can find.

The files that are still floating around have been messed with. ;)

Yea, I just had no clue how exactly it did this so fast. And considering how slow the machine was, I had no idea how it pulled this off. The app I had, I'm not sure how it worked or if it was HDKP or not. I had no idea what it was but my friend said be careful and don't ever open it, it was just for my collection. I had put it on the floppy and so I do still have it, but as I said I'm really not sure what it was.

ahh, memories, reminds me of anti-exe's and deltrees :)
There were a few diff virus's from back in the day that supposidly infected bios or some low level part of the system, and would survive an OS re-install. They would fill the HD up, but I am not sure how they worked.

Do hard drives have firmware to speak of? Like what tells the OS the size and all of that good stuff. Is it possible this program "flashed" the hard drive to mess up its internal programming?

Ok, so i'm talking out of my ass, but its still an interesting theory....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by t34b4g5

Oh the memory's.
the full name of the app is Hard Drive Killer Pro. It was a very very destructive trojan back in the day.

it had more then one use. I should still have a mirror of the original site with all the info.

I'll find what i can Gore and i'll send you a pm when done.. ;)

---

pm too please thanks

there are new "programs" of those that everyone should watch out for like dban,webroot windows washer 5,killdisk etc.etc...

Filling up a harddrive will fook any system......

Has nothing to do with the BIOS

MLF

Quote:

---

there are new "programs" of those that everyone should watch out for like dban,webroot windows washer 5,killdisk etc.etc...

---

Those are legitimate tools that I use regularly?

gore, I want one! I am PMing you an e-mail...........BTW, how is married life?

Cheers :D

All the program would have to do is corrupt the partition
table with bogus numbers, and the drive would appear
to be smaller than it really is, but fdisk should be able
to correct that, but maybe not the lame fdisk that
comes with the M'soft OS. Booting from a floppy,
you could use debug to clear the MBR. A Linux installer
should have been able to properly fdisk the drive.

I doubt it flashed the firmware. I don't think HD firmware is
flashable, no need. Did you ever experiment with the drive by slaving
it to another machine? Do you still have it? Couldn't have been more
than about 4- 500 megs, maybe a gig back in win95 days.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ghost879

there are new "programs" of those that everyone should watch out for like dban,webroot windows washer 5,killdisk etc.etc...

---

what the heck is wrong with these? some of these have legit purposes to wipe the drive. I use dban all the time to wipe drives that I've 'obtained'.

Unfortunately no I no longer have the drive itself, which is why it bothers me so much, as by now I'd have booted up a Slackware disk on it to see what I could do with more apps to use, basically two years after it happened I gave it to my friend's Dad to toy with, and I just kept the RAM, when I have a desktop set up in here (We're still doing some work in the tech room so my machines other than my laptop are still at my Mom's house) I'll grab that floppy too and zip the file to prevent anything happening like what happened to my machine, and send it to a few people who want it with a warning to make sure no one opens it by accident on a work machine or a non test machine.

If anyone can figure out this thing, I'd be amazed, it was to quick for me to tell what happened and my hand was already next to the power button shutting it off and it was already done I think.

If I had a box to toss out I'd just run it myself but sadly, I don't have any spares right now.


anyway, just remember once I have the file ready, BE CAREFUL! I'm not sure if AV picks it up or not because the last time I checked to see if the floppy worked, I didn't have any running because it's all I have left of my collection and didn't want it popping up every 3 seconds.

gore,

I have a number of old drives that work............. for this exercise I propose an 8.4Gb, as I think that might just give us enough time?

I will examine the code first though :xbones:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nihil

gore,

I have a number of old drives that work............. for this exercise I propose an 8.4Gb, as I think that might just give us enough time?

I will examine the code first though :xbones:

---

8.4Gb is that all you got? :D i fiddled with it on a 200Gb last night the drive was knocking on heaven's door already.

didn't take long at all to rip it a new one. :eek:

win2k pro fully updated av and firewall all setup also.

johnno if you need the actual source code then i'll email matt the aus member of HDKP and see if i can get my grubby hands on it.. :cool:

I was wrong.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7197634-claims.html

It seems that everything has flashable firmware
these days, even coffee cups and ball point pens.
:cool:

Hi teabags, that would be kewl............... I will send you an E-mail addy via PM :)

Johnno

Nihil,

So what was the ultimate fate of that drive? Did it permanently kill it as advertised, or were you able to reformat it?

As for infection method, surviving the format, heres a new rootkit utilizing an older method for surviving, writing to the MBR:
http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/101463

Maybe something similar was used to keep this virus alive and keep the Hard Drive unusable?

Hi AK,

I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Seeing what teabags and rcgreen have posted I am wondering if it doesn't mess with the HDD firmware?

If it was the MBR then fixmbr should fix it, and reformatting with Linux certainly would?

:)

Well do let us know when you try it.

I'm anxious to see what the result is. :eek:

I dragged a machine over here today with a floppy and grabbed the floppy I was talking about, so I'll zip up the app and be ready to mail it if I somehow can, otherwise I'll just pop it up on a free web hosting thing or something because most likely it'll be something I can't mail (just about everything has AV scanners built in now, back then they didn't though) so I'll see if I can get it online tomorrow, I'm way to sore to drag anything else in here right now... I carried like 4,000 dollars worth of stuff today and that doesn't include painting some stuff to patch, or putting up curtains in two rooms drilling through walls with a crappy electronic screw driver, and then putting up 4 CD shelves that wall mount in the tech room. And also putting together another desk in the tech room by hand because the damn electronic screw driver isn't strong enough to go through, so I had to use a manual one.... My wrist feels like I ODd on Viagra and couldn't get none.