Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

>> ^marinara:

this is actually very possible, you smartypants would know this if you watched star trek.
In the episode "I, Borg" the crew develops a virus that operates on the visual processors of the borg, infecting them with a "topological anomaly" that could destroy the collective.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/I_Borg_(episode)

They should have just told the Borg "this sentence is false". Works every time

>> ^longde:

Well, I would say this is more engineering than science. But if it was really feasible it would have great applications. You could embed triggers in popular photoscapes, for example.

or better yet, embed malware that will destroy TSA porno-tron machines the moment they take a picture of you!

>> ^longde:

-Pretty sure embedding a fractal pattern on realistic bones would cost more than $1M
-Computers that combust at a critical temperature? Nope. They're made of balsa wood? Plus, a CPU would lock up at a critical temperature.
That said, props for a vivid imagination. I think its a cool concept.


But wouldn't you love to be the guy that just walks up and pulls out the plug, police squad style?

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

>> ^mxxcon:
>> ^Drachen_Jager:
No scanner would see a program in an image, realize it's an executable and execute the program all without the user's knowledge.
It's barely possible that you could transfer a workable program that way through fractals, and the people on the other end would have to spend weeks or months decoding the program before they could make it run IF they could figure out what it was in the first place.
pattern might be constructed in such a way that when scanned it can confuse any piece of software in the chain to cause a buffer overrun, at which point they could craft the following data to actually be executable and contain malware payload.
This is kinda what happened in a few instances of MP3-based viruses. MP3 file's metadata was malformed in such a way that it would crash the player and execute trojan payload that was embedded in that MP3 file.
Look up information about MP3Concept(MP3Virus.Gen)
There was another incident that involved MP3 file played in Winamp player. I can't find link about it now.
So while realistically unlikely, it's possible.

The main difference there being that the MP3 was a digital file which had been manipulated, not a sound recording. The file was corrupted in a very clever way. In the show the bone 'picture' was taken by the forensics team. They did not bring in a file the guy had created, they took a photograph. You can't insert corrupted data, because the data is coming from the camera they own.
you've never had a legitimate program crash while working with a legitimate file? this is when malware gets to do its stuff.

>> ^mxxcon:

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
No scanner would see a program in an image, realize it's an executable and execute the program all without the user's knowledge.
It's barely possible that you could transfer a workable program that way through fractals, and the people on the other end would have to spend weeks or months decoding the program before they could make it run IF they could figure out what it was in the first place.
pattern might be constructed in such a way that when scanned it can confuse any piece of software in the chain to cause a buffer overrun, at which point they could craft the following data to actually be executable and contain malware payload.
This is kinda what happened in a few instances of MP3-based viruses. MP3 file's metadata was malformed in such a way that it would crash the player and execute trojan payload that was embedded in that MP3 file.
Look up information about MP3Concept(MP3Virus.Gen)
There was another incident that involved MP3 file played in Winamp player. I can't find link about it now.
So while realistically unlikely, it's possible.


The main difference there being that the MP3 was a digital file which had been manipulated, not a sound recording. The file was corrupted in a very clever way. In the show the bone 'picture' was taken by the forensics team. They did not bring in a file the guy had created, they took a photograph. You can't insert corrupted data, because the data is coming from the camera they own.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

No scanner would see a program in an image, realize it's an executable and execute the program all without the user's knowledge.
It's barely possible that you could transfer a workable program that way through fractals, and the people on the other end would have to spend weeks or months decoding the program before they could make it run IF they could figure out what it was in the first place.
pattern might be constructed in such a way that when scanned it can confuse any piece of software in the chain to cause a buffer overrun, at which point they could craft the following data to actually be executable and contain malware payload.

This is kinda what happened in a few instances of MP3-based viruses. MP3 file's metadata was malformed in such a way that it would crash the player and execute trojan payload that was embedded in that MP3 file.
Look up information about MP3Concept(MP3Virus.Gen)
There was another incident that involved MP3 file played in Winamp player. I can't find link about it now.

So while realistically unlikely, it's possible.

I don't know, Windows might manage it>> ^Drachen_Jager:

No scanner would see a program in an image, realize it's an executable and execute the program all without the user's knowledge.

DICOM doesn't allow execution of modalities. Bones has just called mutiny on the faleboat.

>> ^Sagemind:

It's like a QR code engraved in the bone. Scan it in and it links to a website, downloading the virus/malware.
It's a neat concept but they would have had to scan it knowing that it was there and scanned it with the right software, not just any scanner would understand and execute the command.

Your video, A new low for TV science: Malware Fractals in Bones, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I've burnt up a few computers - releasing the magic smoke, as they say. Computers tend to run quite hot, and even a few minutes with a faulty fan can do it, particularly in essential components with less heat-sink like the southbridge. But, like @swedishfriend said, there's no reason it should light on fire like that.
>> ^longde:

Interesting. I've heard of batteries combusting, and CPU packaging melting, but never heard of combustion of a CPU or its packaging. How would this happen? What material in the packaging would be susceptible to becoming inflamed?
Also, I know some CPUs have thermal sensors built in to "lock up" at a particular temperature (at least some Intel CPUs). Why wouldn't these kick in? >> ^swedishfriend:
CPUs do combust. It happens all the time. Don't know why there would be more than some smoke though as it wouldn't be surrounded by many materials that would fuel a fire like that. Reading malformed data may cause a system to malfunction which may leave it open for someone to attack it but as stated before there is no reason the data on its own would be executed as a program. Pretty dumb overall. Is this from a spoof type show, I didn't recognize it at all.

Interesting. I've heard of batteries combusting, and CPU packaging melting, but never heard of combustion of a CPU or its packaging. How would this happen? What material in the packaging would be susceptible to becoming inflamed?

Also, I know some CPUs have thermal sensors built in to "lock up" at a particular temperature (at least some Intel CPUs). Why wouldn't these kick in? >> ^swedishfriend:

CPUs do combust. It happens all the time. Don't know why there would be more than some smoke though as it wouldn't be surrounded by many materials that would fuel a fire like that. Reading malformed data may cause a system to malfunction which may leave it open for someone to attack it but as stated before there is no reason the data on its own would be executed as a program. Pretty dumb overall. Is this from a spoof type show, I didn't recognize it at all.

It's like a QR code engraved in the bone. Scan it in and it links to a website, downloading the virus/malware.

It's a neat concept but they would have had to scan it knowing that it was there and scanned it with the right software, not just any scanner would understand and execute the command.

>> ^CrushBug:

Sorry for hijacking this sift, but it is a perfect example of the technical problem I am having with Firefox and VideoSift right now. I cannot play the main video. Clicking on the embed does nothing at all, whereas I was able to play the video posted in comment by Barseps. For the second video, I actually saw the control bar at the bottom of the video, but I don't get the control bar for the main video. IE on the sift works fine, I can watch YouTube videos on the YouTube site just fine, and I can watch non-YouTube videos on the Sift just fine.
Does anyone have any ideas? I have tried reinstalling all kids of software, but nothing has fixed it.


That's interesting. I run Firefox 8.0 on Windows XP and I have no problem.

I'm not real up on software, but it sounds to me as if you have some kind of malware (or similar) problem.
[Edit: I shouldn't put forth an opinion about a problem I don't understand. Software--Uhh?]
What protection software do you use? I use AVG, Spybot, Malwarebytes, and CCleaner.

(Don't worry about posting this here--we all want Videosift to work well)

Well, the Iranian authorities aren't exactly a reputable source of information. That said - and this is quite likely a red herring - there is the incident of the U.S. drone fleet getting infected with some form of malware a while back:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/