Do you suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia?
A surprising number of people appear to believe that something horrible will befall them when the 13th day of the month falls on a Friday. Some are almost paralysed with anxiety as superstition has it that Friday the 13th is a day of bad luck.
And if you’re a computer virus historian (or have just been kicking around for a while) you may well remember that Friday the 13th was a notable date for malware as well.
In the late 1980s and early 90s it wasn’t unusual to hear “computer experts” and the media advise computer users to be particularly careful in the run-up to Friday the 13th, as the then prevalent Jerusalem virus might spring its payload. Furthermore they often advised that PC users should change their system clock to complete avoid their computer ever thinking it was Friday 13th, and leapfrog over to Saturday 14th instead.
A quick…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
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