Halt and Catch Fire

I'd not heard of this term before, either . . . that's creepy to think about.

I wonder if this kind of thing is what DEP (Data Execution Prevention) helps prevent? Most CPU's support hardware DEP now.

 

Thanks for the info Laura.
Although it may not catch fire I often wonder if malware will be written to stress our computers to the max causing hardware failures.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/218482405

SC2 was not malware but a ton of people lost video cards due to dust or overclocking. SC2 programmers forgot to limit the framerates in some parts of the program. I heard my fans ramp up on my GPU and exited SC2 before I did any damage, but if you were not paying attention or did not know the danger....

I see no reason malware could not do a Prime 95 type stress on your computer. Good thing they want control, not destruction.