Saint WinNuke, Apostle of the Blue Screen

Patron of nineties IRC chats, port 139, and everyone who watched Windows 95 die live.

Life

In May 1997 winnuke.c appeared on Bugtraq: a few bytes of "out-of-band" data sent to NetBIOS port 139 were enough to blue-screen Windows 95, NT and Windows for Workgroups. For months it was the favourite prank of IRC chats, where anyone could make an opponent vanish with one click, until Microsoft shipped the fixes.

Prayer

O Saint WinNuke, who turned the screen blue with a single packet, let our systems ignore whatever arrives out of band. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by closing port 139 to the Internet, as everyone should have done back in 1997.

One urgent byte, and Windows takes the day off.