[WOP] -666- FESTERING HATE -666- [FOG] ====================================== W| The Good News: You now have a copy |F o| of one of the greatest programs |r r| that has ever been created! |i s| The Bad News: It's quite likely |e h| that it's the only program you now |n i| have in your possession. |d p|====================================|s p| Hey Glen! We sincerely hope our | e| royalty checks are in the mail! |o r| Seeing how we're making you rich |f s| by providing a market for virus | | detection software! |G o|====================================|l f|Elect LORD DIGITAL as God committee!|e |====================================|n P| )/> The Kool/Rad Alliance! <\( | a| Rancid Grapefruit -- Cereal Killer |B t|====================================|r r| This program is made possible by a |e i| grant from Pig's Knuckle ELITE |d c| Research. Orderline: 313/534-1466 |o k======[(C) 1988 ELECTRONIC ARTS]======n |
Festering Hate (also known as hate) and CyberAIDS are the names of the first two Apple II ProDOS viruses. CyberAIDS appears to have been a series of viruses with minor changes in the code, culminating in the final version called Festering Hate, which appeared in 1988 (The Festering Hate World Tour - Festering Hate in '88). When the virus went off, the title page credited "Rancid Grapefruit" and "Cereal Killer" of the "Kool/Rad Alliance!"
The phone number embedded in the detonation page was apparently the home number of John Maxfield (also known as "Cable Pair") a well-known FBI informant and private investigator of the era, whose specialty was computer crime and hackers.[1][2]
Unlike the few Apple viruses that had come before, such as the Elk Cloner virus, that were essentially annoying but did no damage, the Festering Hate series of viruses was extremely destructive, spreading to all system files it could find on the host computer (hard drive, floppy and system memory) and then destroying everything when it could no longer find any uninfected files.