Don't miss the interview with Robert McQuaid, a fascinating read:

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protecti...

An investigation into the infamous 80's copy protection scheme PROLOK that involved burning holes on diskettes.

Also included is an interview with Quaid Software founder, Robert McQuaid. Vault sued Quaid Software for producing CopyWrite, a utility that could copy PROLOK protected diskettes.

This brings back old memories. My first ever consulting gig in the early 90s was to come up with floppy-based copy protection software for an accounting package. It was written in assembly and C.

The article mentions that the company died when they announced copy protection that, upon a failed check, would wipe your hard drive and potentially install a worm.

It reminded me of when FTDI decided to combat clones, and released a driver that intentionally fried the clones.

That got them in a lot of hot water, so they backed off...but then released a driver that, upon thinking it was talking to a clone, would spew garbage data out the serial port.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/ftdi-gate-2-0...

I wonder if that garbage-spewing ever inadvertently caused unexpected or dangerous behavior in microcontroller boards, PLCs, etc that control really important processes or big hardware. Imagine the scandal if it caused something like a PLC in a chemical plant to go bonkers. On the surface it seems unlikely, but somewhere out there is a microcontroller that takes really short, simple serial commands and random data could eventually generate a 'valid' command that does something that really shouldn't be done.