NightMare (scareware)

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The image displayed every five minutes. NightMare Amiga scareware.png
The image displayed every five minutes.

NightMare is a scareware program distributed on the Fish Disks for the Amiga computer (Fish #448). It is generally credited to be the first scareware program of its type. [1]

The program was developed by Patrick Evans (Nobleton, Ontario, Canada) in 1990 and was free to redistribute, with source code available from the author. [2]

Effects

When NightMare executes, it runs in the background. Every five minutes, it changes the entire screen of the computer for four fifths of a second to an image of a skull with blood on its teeth and a bullet hole with blood leaking out of it, and plays an echoing shriek on the audio channels. [3]

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References

  1. "Scareware White Paper | Portland, Oregon Enterprise Security Consultant | removing scareware".
  2. "Fish-disk 448 content: NightMare | Amiga Fish Disk database". Amiga-fish.erkan.se. 2013-09-30. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
  3. "Shields Up!: How to spot and avoid scareware". GadgeTell. Retrieved 2013-10-04.