This is the story of an April Fool’s Day joke that got wildly out of control.
In 1991, a columnist for InfoWorld claimed that he learned of a hyper-advanced computer virus called “AF/91” that disabled Iraqi air defense systems during the first Gulf War. This virus had allegedly escaped Iraq and threatened every computer that used a windows-based graphical interface. The last line of the column revealed the truth: the story of the AF/91 virus was a fun bit of fiction for April 1st.
But shortly afterwards, a journalist for U.S. News & World Report reported on a virus that sounded suspiciously similar to AF/91, based on confirmation from two government officials. Though the report was clearly based on the joke virus from InfoWorld, the publication refused to retract. So for more than a decade the story was repeated as if it were true in newspapers, magazines, and even in a report by a major think tank.
The boys walk through the evolution of the strange tale of this virus hoax and speculate about why it spread so widely for so long.
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REFERENCES
Meta-Virus Set to Unleash Plague on Windows 3.0 Users
https://books.google.com/books?id=0FAEAAAAMBAJ
Computer Virus Story Proves To Be a Twice-Told Tale
https://www.newspapers.com/image/532416866/
Russian Views On Electronic and Information Warfare
https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/International_Security_Affairs/14-F-0564_DOC_01_RUSSIAN_VIEWS_ON_ELECTRONIC_AND_INFORMATION_WARFARE_vol_1.pdf
Taking a byte from Baghdad: Information War could hobble Iraq, but might become a two edged sword
https://www.newspapers.com/image/775197909/
One printer, one virus, one disabled Iraqi air defense
https://www.theregister.com/2003/03/10/one_printer_one_virus_one/
Attack Of The Trojan Printers
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2285234/attack-of-the-trojan-printers.html
