On this day in 1992 the Michelangelo Virus struck thousands of computers, causing data loss. The Michelangelo Virus is a computer virus that was discovered on February 4, 1991 and was designed to infect computers by overwriting critical data on their boot disk and damaging the disk. Researchers named it after the Renaissance artist Michelangelo because every year it would remain dormant until the artist’s birthday, March 6. There is nothing in the virus’ code that referenced the artist however, so it is quite possible that the virus author, who remains unknown, never intended for the virus to be named after Michelangelo!
The Michelangelo Virus is among the earliest viruses to receive widespread media attention, as well as instigate widespread hysteria. The latter was caused primarily by initial reports on the virus stating that it would affect millions of computers, when in fact it only infected a few thousand. After the initial attack, news outlets eventually lost interest in the virus and it was quickly forgotten.