SCA virus
More info
- Creator
- Swiss Cracking Association
- Released
- 1987
- Type
- Bootblock virus
- Platform
- Amiga
The first known Amiga virus, released in 1987 — a bootblock virus that spread on floppies and showed an almost friendly greeting.
The SCA virus was written by the Swiss Cracking Association in late 1987 and infected the Amiga's bootblock, the first sectors read when a floppy booted. Roughly every fifteenth warm reset it displayed the line "Something wonderful has happened … your AMIGA is alive". It deleted nothing, but it overwrote the bootblock and copied itself onto every unprotected disk that happened to be in the drive.
The harm was mostly a matter of principle: it showed how exposed the shared-floppy culture was, where cracktros and games passed hand to hand. The countermeasure VirusX arrived quickly, and the arms race between bootblock viruses and virus killers became its own small scene alongside warez.