{"id":28625,"date":"2022-02-25T10:19:27","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T15:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=28625"},"modified":"2022-02-25T10:26:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T15:26:33","slug":"digital-archaeology-floppy-disk-10-danger-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/02\/25\/digital-archaeology-floppy-disk-10-danger-doc\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Archaeology: Floppy Disk #10 \u2013 DANGER.DOC"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/center><\/p>\n

A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series:<\/p>\n

I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here.<\/p>\n

Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.<\/p>\n

A specific definition of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.”<\/p>\n

This service was text based and was accessed via whatever terminal program you used on your computer to dial in to Delphi\u2019s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don\u2019t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in the 1980s. In any case, much of this stuff would have been private at the time and probably wouldn’t be in such archives even if they existed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This post includes the contents of DANGER.DOC which is dated September 30th, 1985. This is some kind of announcement I’m assuming was sent out by Delphi. Basically, it warns about various trojans and names some specific shareware files to avoid because of malicious behavior.<\/p>\n

See the previous post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

===
\nDANGER.DOC
\n===<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n
SEP   EXIT +\n  6  26-SEP   NEW GOODIE BRIEF\n  7  23-SEP   MANAGERS CONFERENCE BRIEF\n  8  15-SEP   PEABO AND DICK EVANS (BRIEF)\n\nANNOUNCE>(SCAN, READ, HELP or EXIT): read 2\n\n  2  30-SEP  VERY BAD SOFTWARE WARNING\n\nEXCERPT FROM THE AUSTIN PC USERS GROUP NEWSLETTER 9\/85\n\n\n\nWarning:  Someone is trying  to destroy your data.  Beware of\n\nthe  SUDDEN upsurge  of \"Trojan  Horse\" programs  on Bulletin\n\nBoards and  in the public domain.   These programs purport to\n\nbe  useful utilities, but,  in reality, they  are designed to\n\nsack your system.\n\n\n\nOne has shown up as EGABTR, a program that claims to show you\n\nhow  to  maximize  the  features  of  IBM's Enhanced Graphics\n\nAdapter, and has also  been spotted as a  new super-directory\n\nprogram.   It actually  erases the  file allocation tables on\n\nyour hard  disk.  For good measure, it asks you to put a disk\n\nin Drive A:, then another  in Drive B:.  After it  has erased\n\nthose FAT's too it displays,\n\n\n\n\"Got You! Arf! Arf!\"\n\n\n\nDon't  run  any  public-domain  program  that  is not a known\n\nquantity.   Have  someone  you  know  and trust vouch for it.\n\nALWAYS  examine  it  FIRST   with  DEBUG, looking for all the\n\nASCII strings and  data.  If there is  anything even slightly\n\nsuspicious about it,  do a cursory  disassembly.  Be wary  of\n\ndisk calls (INTERRUPT 13H), especially if the  program has no\n\nbusiness writing  to the  diskl.  Run  your system  in Floppy\n\nonly mode  with write protect tabs on  the disk on junk disks\n\nin the drives.\n\n\n\nAnother bit of information came from the ARPANET:  Be careful\n\nwhat  you put into  your machine.  There  is out there making\n\nthe rounds  of the  REMOTE BULLETIN  BOARDS a  program called\n\n\n\nVDIR.COM.\n\n\n\nIt is a little hard to  tell what the program is supposed  to\n\ndo.\n\n\n\nWhat  it  actually  does  is  TRASH  your  system.  It writes\n\ngarbage onto ANY disk it can find, including hard disks,  and\n\nflashes up various messages telling  you what is doing.  It's\n\na TIME BOMB:  once run, you  can't be sure  what will happpen\n\nnext because it doesn't always do anything immediately.  At a\n\nlater  time,  though,  it  can  CRASH your system.  Does this\n\nremind you of some of  the imbecillic copy-protection schemes\n\nthreatened by companies such as Vault and Defendisk?  Anyway,\n\nyou'd do well to avoid VDIR.COM.  I expect there are a couple\n\nof  harmless-perhaps   even  useful=Public   Domain  programs\n\nfloating  about with  the name  VDIR; and,  of course, anyone\n\nwarped enough  to launch  this kind  of trap  once, can do it\n\nagain.  Be careful about untested \"Free\" software.\n\n\n\nTwo other files that we are aware of that will also do damage\n\nas reported in the past:\n\n\n\nSTAR.EXE\n\n\n\nPresents  a  screen  of  stars  then  copies  RBBS-PC.DEF and\n\nrenames  it.  The  caller then  calls back  later and d\/l the\n\ninnocently named file,  and he then  has the SYSOP's  and all\n\nthe Users' passwords.\n\n\n\nSECRET.BAS\n\n\n\nThis file was left on  an RBBS with a message saying that the\n\ncaller  got the file from a  mainframe, and could not get the\n\nfile to run in his PC, and asked someone to try it out.  When\n\nit was executed, it formatted all disks on the system.\n\n\n\n(This file  DANGER.DOC from  JIMNET bulletin  board - Austin,\n\nTX; Sept 85)\n\n\n\n\nANNOUNCE>(SCAN, READ, HELP or EXIT):\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series: I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here. Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s. A specific definition of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.” This service was text based and was accessed via whatever terminal program you used on your computer to dial in to Delphi\u2019s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don\u2019t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[66,2913,2042,2362,2914],"class_list":["post-28625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-arcana","tag-66","tag-delphi","tag-digital-archaeology","tag-retrocomputing","tag-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}