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130-467: Office Space is a 1999 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge . It satirizes the work life of a typical 1990s software company , focusing on a handful of individuals weary of their jobs. It stars Ron Livingston , Jennifer Aniston , Gary Cole , Stephen Root , David Herman , Ajay Naidu , and Diedrich Bader . Office Space was filmed in Dallas and Austin, Texas . It

260-497: A Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool that is updated as part of the regular Windows update regime, and an older optional anti-malware (malware removal) tool Windows Defender that has been upgraded to an antivirus product in Windows 8. Some viruses disable System Restore and other important Windows tools such as Task Manager and CMD . An example of a virus that does this is CiaDoor. Many such viruses can be removed by rebooting

390-544: A bug in Michael's code has caused the virus to steal over $ 300,000 across the weekend, which guarantees they will be caught. Unable to conceal the crime, Peter decides to accept full responsibility, writing a confession and slipping it under Lumbergh's office door after hours, along with traveler's checks for the stolen money. Peter learns that the 'Lumbergh' with whom Joanna slept was Ron Lumbergh, another software engineer unrelated to Bill Lumbergh. He meets Joanna, who has started

520-573: A computer virus designed by Michael to divert huge numbers of fractions of pennies into a bank account. Peter successfully installs the virus, and on Michael and Samir's last day, he steals a frequently malfunctioning printer, which the three proceed to destroy in a field. At a weekend party, Peter hears rumors from a colleague that Joanna had slept with Lumbergh. When Joanna confirms this, a heated exchange leads to them breaking up. Frustrated with her job, Joanna quits in response to another lecture about her lack of "flair". On Monday, Peter discovers that

650-483: A disk image , or a backup copy is one solution—restoring an earlier backup disk "image" is relatively simple to do, usually removes any malware, and may be faster than "disinfecting" the computer—or reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system and programs from scratch, as described below, then restoring user preferences. Reinstalling the operating system is another approach to virus removal. It may be possible to recover copies of essential user data by booting from

780-528: A live CD , or connecting the hard drive to another computer and booting from the second computer's operating system, taking great care not to infect that computer by executing any infected programs on the original drive. The original hard drive can then be reformatted and the OS and all programs installed from original media. Once the system has been restored, precautions must be taken to avoid reinfection from any restored executable files . The first known description of

910-446: A non-memory-resident virus (or "non-resident virus"), when executed, scans the disk for targets, infects them, and then exits (i.e. it does not remain in memory after it is done executing). Many common applications, such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word , allow macro programs to be embedded in documents or emails, so that the programs may be run automatically when the document is opened. A macro virus (or "document virus")

1040-706: A ransom payment is made. Phishing is a deception in which the malicious individual pretends to be a friend, computer security expert, or other benevolent individual, with the goal of convincing the targeted individual to reveal passwords or other personal information. Other commonly used preventive measures include timely operating system updates, software updates, careful Internet browsing (avoiding shady websites), and installation of only trusted software. Certain browsers flag sites that have been reported to Google and that have been confirmed as hosting malware by Google. There are two common methods that an antivirus software application uses to detect viruses, as described in

1170-507: A web address link as an instant message to all the contacts (e.g., friends and colleagues' e-mail addresses) stored on an infected machine. If the recipient, thinking the link is from a friend (a trusted source) follows the link to the website, the virus hosted at the site may be able to infect this new computer and continue propagating. Viruses that spread using cross-site scripting were first reported in 2002, and were academically demonstrated in 2005. There have been multiple instances of

1300-476: A brutal portrayal of workplace misery that its most useful points of comparison date back to when office culture was first unleashed on humanity." Satire (film and television) Film or television satire may be of the political , religious , or social variety. Works using satire are often seen as controversial or taboo in nature, with topics such as race, class, system, violence, sex, war, and politics, criticizing or commenting on them, typically under

1430-891: A database of file " hashes " for Windows OS files, so the security software can identify altered files, and request Windows installation media to replace them with authentic versions. In older versions of Windows, file cryptographic hash functions of Windows OS files stored in Windows—to allow file integrity/authenticity to be checked—could be overwritten so that the System File Checker would report that altered system files are authentic, so using file hashes to scan for altered files would not always guarantee finding an infection. Most modern antivirus programs try to find virus-patterns inside ordinary programs by scanning them for so-called virus signatures . Different antivirus programs will employ different search methods when identifying viruses. If

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1560-408: A demonstration that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible viruses. Fred Cohen's theoretical compression virus was an example of a virus which was not malicious software ( malware ), but was putatively benevolent (well-intentioned). However, antivirus professionals do not accept the concept of "benevolent viruses", as any desired function can be implemented without involving

1690-406: A different variant of the virus. One method of evading signature detection is to use simple encryption to encipher (encode) the body of the virus, leaving only the encryption module and a static cryptographic key in cleartext which does not change from one infection to the next. In this case, the virus consists of a small decrypting module and an encrypted copy of the virus code. If the virus

1820-458: A drab, monotone way. He repeatedly makes Milton move his desk, and assigns him humiliating tasks, while making Peter work almost every weekend. Anne persuades Peter to attend an occupational hypnotherapy session led by Dr. Swanson. Swanson hypnotizes Peter and tells him to feel relaxed and stop caring about his job until he snaps his fingers. However, Swanson suddenly dies of a heart attack before snapping Peter out of it. Peter sleeps soundly through

1950-409: A file on a computer that already contains copies of the virus. The advantage of using such slow polymorphic code is that it makes it more difficult for antivirus professionals and investigators to obtain representative samples of the virus, because "bait" files that are infected in one run will typically contain identical or similar samples of the virus. This will make it more likely that the detection by

2080-469: A fully functional virus written in assembler programming language for a SIEMENS 4004/35 computer system. In 1980, Jürgen Kraus wrote his Diplom thesis "Selbstreproduktion bei Programmen" (Self-reproduction of programs) at the University of Dortmund . In his work Kraus postulated that computer programs can behave in a way similar to biological viruses. The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET ,

2210-463: A lot of people who say, 'I quit my job because of you.' That's kind of a heavy load to carry." Livingston says that people tell him watching Office Space made them feel better, which he still appreciates. Office Space has become a cult classic , selling well on home video and DVD. As of 2003, it had sold 2.6 million copies on VHS and DVD . In the same year, it was in the top 20 best-selling Fox DVDs. As of 2006, it had sold over six million DVDs in

2340-422: A means of encryption inside an executable in which the virus is encrypted under certain events, such as the virus scanner being disabled for updates or the computer being rebooted . This is called cryptovirology . Polymorphic code was the first technique that posed a serious threat to virus scanners. Just like regular encrypted viruses, a polymorphic virus infects files with an encrypted copy of itself, which

2470-721: A million dollars that weekend. The movie's grosses continued to decline precipitously, and after the end of March, when it pulled in less than $ 40,000 from 75 screens, it was pulled from release altogether. According to Judge, a studio executive blamed the movie exclusively for the failure, telling him "Nobody wants to see your little movie about ordinary people and their boring little lives." It went on to make $ 10.8 million in North America. The international release brought an additional $ 2 million. On home release, $ 8 million in DVD, Blu-ray Disc and VHS sales were sold at release as of April 2006. On

2600-446: A network limits the destructive potential of viruses and malware. Open-source operating systems such as Linux allow users to choose from a variety of desktop environments , packaging tools, etc., which means that malicious code targeting any of these systems will only affect a subset of all users. Many Windows users are running the same set of applications, enabling viruses to rapidly spread among Microsoft Windows systems by targeting

2730-423: A new job at another restaurant. He apologizes, and they reconcile. The next morning, Peter drives to Initech expecting to be arrested, but discovers that Milton has burned down the building out of revenge for his mistreatment, destroying all evidence. Peter enjoys a new job as a construction worker with his neighbor Lawrence, while Samir and Michael begin new jobs at Initech's rival Initrode, and Milton, having found

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2860-515: A parking lot of a government building or other target, with the hopes that curious users will insert the drive into a computer. In a 2015 experiment, researchers at the University of Michigan found that 45–98 percent of users would plug in a flash drive of unknown origin. The vast majority of viruses target systems running Microsoft Windows . This is due to Microsoft's large market share of desktop computer users. The diversity of software systems on

2990-460: A presumed negative perception of satire in the [American] industry: George S. Kaufman , the great Broadway playwright and director, and screenwriter, once said: 'Satire is what closes on Saturday night.' An excellent wisecrack, but it led the way to a general belief in America that satire is not commercial. When you pitch a satirical film idea, don't refer to it as satire. I used to, and I was met with

3120-400: A result, even if a user ran the virus, it could not harm their operating system. The Bliss virus never became widespread, and remains chiefly a research curiosity. Its creator later posted the source code to Usenet , allowing researchers to see how it worked. Before computer networks became widespread, most viruses spread on removable media , particularly floppy disks . In the early days of

3250-422: A self-reproducing computer program is considered the world's first computer virus, and he is considered to be the theoretical "father" of computer virology. In 1972, Veith Risak directly building on von Neumann's work on self-replication , published his article "Selbstreproduzierende Automaten mit minimaler Informationsübertragung" (Self-reproducing automata with minimal information exchange). The article describes

3380-401: A self-reproducing program in fiction is in the 1970 short story The Scarred Man by Gregory Benford which describes a computer program called VIRUS which, when installed on a computer with telephone modem dialing capability, randomly dials phone numbers until it hits a modem that is answered by another computer, and then attempts to program the answering computer with its own program, so that

3510-456: A specific type of email system ( Microsoft Outlook is the most commonly used), harvest email addresses from various sources, and may append copies of themselves to all email sent, or may generate email messages containing copies of themselves as attachments. To avoid detection by users, some viruses employ different kinds of deception . Some old viruses, especially on the DOS platform, make sure that

3640-438: A variety of different subsystems on their host computers and software. One manner of classifying viruses is to analyze whether they reside in binary executables (such as .EXE or .COM files ), data files (such as Microsoft Word documents or PDF files ), or in the boot sector of the host's hard drive (or some combination of all of these). A memory-resident virus (or simply "resident virus") installs itself as part of

3770-428: A virus (automatic compression, for instance, is available under Windows at the choice of the user). Any virus will by definition make unauthorised changes to a computer, which is undesirable even if no damage is done or intended. The first page of Dr Solomon's Virus Encyclopaedia explains the undesirability of viruses, even those that do nothing but reproduce. An article that describes "useful virus functionalities"

3900-509: A virus is with a constant so that the exclusive-or operation had only to be repeated for decryption. It is suspicious for a code to modify itself, so the code to do the encryption/decryption may be part of the signature in many virus definitions. A simpler older approach did not use a key, where the encryption consisted only of operations with no parameters, like incrementing and decrementing, bitwise rotation, arithmetic negation, and logical NOT. Some viruses, called polymorphic viruses, will employ

4030-516: A virus scanner finds such a pattern in a file, it will perform other checks to make sure that it has found the virus, and not merely a coincidental sequence in an innocent file, before it notifies the user that the file is infected. The user can then delete, or (in some cases) "clean" or "heal" the infected file. Some viruses employ techniques that make detection by means of signatures difficult but probably not impossible. These viruses modify their code on each infection. That is, each infected file contains

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4160-509: A virus, in some cases, the virus is designed so that the e-mail appears to be from a reputable organization (e.g., a major bank or credit card company). Boot sector viruses specifically target the boot sector and/or the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the host's hard disk drive , solid-state drive , or removable storage media ( flash drives , floppy disks , etc.). The most common way of transmission of computer viruses in boot sector

4290-750: A virus, one can start again using the backup (which will hopefully be recent). If a backup session on optical media like CD and DVD is closed, it becomes read-only and can no longer be affected by a virus (so long as a virus or infected file was not copied onto the CD / DVD ). Likewise, an operating system on a bootable CD can be used to start the computer if the installed operating systems become unusable. Backups on removable media must be carefully inspected before restoration. The Gammima virus, for example, propagates via removable flash drives . Many websites run by antivirus software companies provide free online virus scanning, with limited "cleaning" facilities (after all,

4420-580: Is a computer program that executes specific machine code to reach the maximum CPU power dissipation ( thermal energy output for the central processing units ). Computer cooling apparatus are designed to dissipate power up to the thermal design power , rather than maximum power, and a power virus could cause the system to overheat if it does not have logic to stop the processor. This may cause permanent physical damage. Power viruses can be malicious, but are often suites of test software used for integration testing and thermal testing of computer components during

4550-419: Is a virus that is written in a macro language and embedded into these documents so that when users open the file, the virus code is executed, and can infect the user's computer. This is one of the reasons that it is dangerous to open unexpected or suspicious attachments in e-mails . While not opening attachments in e-mails from unknown persons or organizations can help to reduce the likelihood of contracting

4680-452: Is an accepted version of this page A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus, a metaphor derived from biological viruses . Computer viruses generally require a host program . The virus writes its own code into

4810-468: Is based on Judge's Milton cartoon series and was his first foray into live-action filmmaking. The film was Judge's second full-length motion picture release, following Beavis and Butt-Head Do America . It was released in theaters on February 19, 1999, by 20th Century Fox . Its sympathetic depiction of ordinary information technology workers garnered a cult following within that field, but it also addresses themes familiar to white-collar employees and

4940-425: Is decoded by a decryption module. In the case of polymorphic viruses, however, this decryption module is also modified on each infection. A well-written polymorphic virus therefore has no parts which remain identical between infections, making it very difficult to detect directly using "signatures". Antivirus software can detect it by decrypting the viruses using an emulator , or by statistical pattern analysis of

5070-417: Is encrypted with a different key for each infected file, the only part of the virus that remains constant is the decrypting module, which would (for example) be appended to the end. In this case, a virus scanner cannot directly detect the virus using signatures, but it can still detect the decrypting module, which still makes indirect detection of the virus possible. Since these would be symmetric keys, stored on

5200-569: Is friends with co-workers Samir Nagheenanajar, who hates that no one can pronounce his last name, and Michael Bolton, who hates having the same name as the famous singer . Other co-workers are Milton Waddams, a meek collator who mumbles to himself and is mostly ignored by the rest of the office; and Tom Smykowski, a jaded product manager who is routinely scared of being fired. The staff suffers under top-heavy, callous management, especially from vice president Bill Lumbergh , whom Peter hates and avoids confronting, as Lumbergh micromanages all his staff in

5330-518: Is learned that it already happened five years ago, and neither Milton nor the accounting department was notified due to a payroll glitch. The accounting staff is told to stop Milton's salary payments without telling him. Milton is subjected to further mistreatment, including the confiscation of his beloved red stapler and the constant relocating of his desk, eventually down to the basement. Tired of being mistreated, Peter, Michael, and Samir decide to take revenge by infecting Initech's accounting system with

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5460-412: Is often designed with security features to prevent unauthorized use of system resources, many viruses must exploit and manipulate security bugs , which are security defects in a system or application software, to spread themselves and infect other computers. Software development strategies that produce large numbers of "bugs" will generally also produce potential exploitable "holes" or "entrances" for

5590-476: Is part of the metamorphic engine. Damage is due to causing system failure, corrupting data, wasting computer resources, increasing maintenance costs or stealing personal information. Even though no antivirus software can uncover all computer viruses (especially new ones), computer security researchers are actively searching for new ways to enable antivirus solutions to more effectively detect emerging viruses, before they become widely distributed. A power virus

5720-620: Is physical media. When reading the VBR of the drive, the infected floppy disk or USB flash drive connected to the computer will transfer data, and then modify or replace the existing boot code. The next time a user tries to start the desktop, the virus will immediately load and run as part of the master boot record. Email viruses are viruses that intentionally, rather than accidentally, use the email system to spread. While virus infected files may be accidentally sent as email attachments , email viruses are aware of email system functions. They generally target

5850-462: Is this? A big bird? A mummy? A beekeeper?' And the tagline 'Work Sucks'? It looked like an Office Depot ad. I just hated it. I hated the trailers, too and the TV ads especially". McGinley, too, felt it looked like Big Bird from the children's series Sesame Street , and that he would not go to see such a film. For the home release Judge was upset that the same image was used, albeit with Milton peeking over

5980-440: Is to use a heuristic algorithm based on common virus behaviors. This method can detect new viruses for which antivirus security firms have yet to define a "signature", but it also gives rise to more false positives than using signatures. False positives can be disruptive, especially in a commercial environment, because it may lead to a company instructing staff not to use the company computer system until IT services have checked

6110-675: The San Francisco Chronicle , Mick LaSalle writes, "Livingston is nicely cast as Peter, a young guy whose imagination and capacity for happiness are the very things making him miserable." In USA Today , Susan Wloszczyna wrote, "If you've ever had a job, you'll be amused by this paean to peons." Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C" rating and criticized it for feeling "cramped and underimagined". In his review for The Globe and Mail , Rick Groen wrote: "Perhaps his TV background makes him unaccustomed to

6240-461: The CIH virus , or Chernobyl Virus, infects Portable Executable files. Because those files have many empty gaps, the virus, which was 1 KB in length, did not add to the size of the file. Some viruses try to avoid detection by killing the tasks associated with antivirus software before it can detect them (for example, Conficker ). A Virus may also hide its presence using a rootkit by not showing itself on

6370-511: The Elk Cloner virus would be activated, infecting the personal computer and displaying a short poem beginning "Elk Cloner: The program with a personality." In 1984, Fred Cohen from the University of Southern California wrote his paper "Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments". It was the first paper to explicitly call a self-reproducing program a "virus", a term introduced by Cohen's mentor Leonard Adleman . In 1987, Fred Cohen published

6500-488: The Microsoft Outlook Component Object Model (COM) interface. Some old versions of Microsoft Word allow macros to replicate themselves with additional blank lines. If two macro viruses simultaneously infect a document, the combination of the two, if also self-replicating, can appear as a "mating" of the two and would likely be detected as a virus unique from the "parents". A virus may also send

6630-711: The San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s, "just in the heart of Silicon Valley and in the middle of that overachiever yuppie thing, it was just awful." Peter Chernin , head of 20th Century Fox , where Judge had a deal, wanted to make a film out of the Milton character, inspired by a former coworker of Judge's in Silicon Valley who had threatened to quit if the company moved his desk again. "You don't want to know what he does at home after work", Judge replied. Instead he suggested an ensemble cast –based film; someone at

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6760-652: The Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (now included with Windows (Security) Updates on " Patch Tuesday ", the second Tuesday of each month), and Windows Defender (an optional download in the case of Windows XP). Additionally, several capable antivirus software programs are available for free download from the Internet (usually restricted to non-commercial use). Some such free programs are almost as good as commercial competitors. Common security vulnerabilities are assigned CVE IDs and listed in

6890-544: The antivirus software article. The first, and by far the most common method of virus detection is using a list of virus signature definitions. This works by examining the content of the computer's memory (its Random Access Memory (RAM), and boot sectors ) and the files stored on fixed or removable drives (hard drives, floppy drives, or USB flash drives), and comparing those files against a database of known virus "signatures". Virus signatures are just strings of code that are used to identify individual viruses; for each virus,

7020-437: The break dancing , which he did with local friends after shooting his scenes during the day. The improvisation also helped solve some problems with the script. Originally Bolton was to refer to the singer he shared his name with as a "no-singing asshole". However, Herman recalled, it was decided that the film could not say that since it would imply he did not sing his own songs, so he came up with "no-talent ass-clown". Judge

7150-421: The personal computer , many users regularly exchanged information and programs on floppies. Some viruses spread by infecting programs stored on these disks, while others installed themselves into the disk boot sector , ensuring that they would be run when the user booted the computer from the disk, usually inadvertently. Personal computers of the era would attempt to boot first from a floppy if one had been left in

7280-492: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 103 reviews and an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Mike Judge lampoons the office grind with its inspired mix of sharp dialogue and witty one-liners." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore during opening weekend gave

7410-441: The "last modified" date of a host file stays the same when the file is infected by the virus. This approach does not fool antivirus software , however, especially those which maintain and date cyclic redundancy checks on file changes. Some viruses can infect files without increasing their sizes or damaging the files. They accomplish this by overwriting unused areas of executable files. These are called cavity viruses . For example,

7540-594: The Michael Bolton character's anger "sexy", Judge said. Four years later, Judge was working on the Idiocracy screenplay with Etan Cohen . During a break, the two went to an Austin Starbucks , and the baristas were doing impressions of Lumbergh. Cohen asked Judge if they were only doing it because he was present, whereupon the barista turned around and asked the two if they had ever seen the movie. Other cast members found

7670-421: The Milton character used one painted in that color in the film. Judge's 2009 film Extract is also set in an office and was intended as a companion piece to Office Space . Peter Gibbons is a frustrated and unmotivated programmer who works at a Texas-based software company Initech. Unable to stand up to his overcritical girlfriend, Anne, he is in love with local waitress Joanna, but is afraid to speak to her. He

7800-595: The US National Vulnerability Database . Secunia PSI is an example of software, free for personal use, that will check a PC for vulnerable out-of-date software, and attempt to update it. Ransomware and phishing scam alerts appear as press releases on the Internet Crime Complaint Center noticeboard . Ransomware is a virus that posts a message on the user's screen saying that the screen or system will remain locked or unusable until

7930-485: The United States alone. Four years after the film's release, Judge recalled that one of his assistant directors on the film told him they had gone out to eat at a TGI Fridays and noticed that the waitstaff were no longer wearing buttons on their uniforms, the "flair" Joanna quits her job over in the film. Asked why, the manager told him that after Office Space had come out, customers started making jokes about it, so

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8060-452: The antivirus designer tries to choose a unique signature string that will not be found in a legitimate program. Different antivirus programs use different "signatures" to identify viruses. The disadvantage of this detection method is that users are only protected from viruses that are detected by signatures in their most recent virus definition update, and not protected from new viruses (see " zero-day attack "). A second method to find viruses

8190-519: The blows with bat, feet and fists. Years afterward, Naidu says, he met some actual mafiosi in New York who told him that they were huge fans of the film, and the scene was "authentic". McGinley says the film contains many improvised moments. "It was like jazz on that set". One example he recalled was when Paul Willson as Bob Porter cannot pronounce Samir's last name: "Naga ... Naga ... well, not gonna work here anymore anyway." Naidu, for his part, improvised

8320-574: The chain dropped the requirement from its dress code. "So, maybe I made the world a better place" he told Deadline Hollywood in 2014. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked it fifth on its list "25 Great Comedies From the Past 25 Years", despite having originally given the film a poor review. In February 2009, a reunion of many of the cast members took place at the Paramount Theatre in Austin to celebrate

8450-401: The channel had broadcast the film another 35 times. These broadcasts helped develop the film's cult following; Livingston credits the regular airings the film received on Comedy Central for making Office Space a cult favorite: "It felt like it kind of went viral before that concept even existed." Since then, Livingston has been approached by college students and office workers. He said, "I get

8580-695: The character 10 times funnier." A casting search in Texas yielded Greg Pitts for Drew, but no one who could play the Chotchkie's manager, so Judge took that role himself. Judge made the transition from animation to live-action with the help of Tim Suhrstedt , the film's director of photography , who taught him about lenses and where to put the camera. Judge says, "I had a great crew, and it's good going into it not pretending you're an expert". Principal photography began in Texas in May 1998. Several issues arose during filming. By

8710-491: The computer attempts to download or run the executable file (which may be distributed as an email attachment, or on USB flash drives , for example). Some antivirus software blocks known malicious websites that attempt to install malware. Antivirus software does not change the underlying capability of hosts to transmit viruses. Users must update their software regularly to patch security vulnerabilities ("holes"). Antivirus software also needs to be regularly updated to recognize

8840-406: The computer, entering Windows " safe mode " with networking, and then using system tools or Microsoft Safety Scanner . System Restore on Windows Me , Windows XP , Windows Vista and Windows 7 can restore the registry and critical system files to a previous checkpoint. Often a virus will cause a system to "hang" or "freeze", and a subsequent hard reboot will render a system restore point from

8970-457: The cross-site scripting viruses in the "wild", exploiting websites such as MySpace (with the Samy worm) and Yahoo! . In 1989 The ADAPSO Software Industry Division published Dealing With Electronic Vandalism , in which they followed the risk of data loss by "the added risk of losing customer confidence." Many users install antivirus software that can detect and eliminate known viruses when

9100-598: The demands of a feature-length script (the ending seems almost panicky in its abruptness), or maybe he just succumbs to the lure of the easy yuk...what began as discomfiting satire soon devolves into silly farce." In his review in The New York Times , Stephen Holden wrote, "It has the loose-jointed feel of a bunch of sketches packed together into a narrative that doesn't gather much momentum." In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named Office Space one of "The 100 best films from 1983 to 2008", ranking it at #73. Disappointed in

9230-629: The design phase of a product, or for product benchmarking . Stability test applications are similar programs which have the same effect as power viruses (high CPU usage) but stay under the user's control. They are used for testing CPUs, for example, when overclocking . Spinlock in a poorly written program may cause similar symptoms, if it lasts sufficiently long. Different micro-architectures typically require different machine code to hit their maximum power. Examples of such machine code do not appear to be distributed in CPU reference materials. As software

9360-599: The disguise of other genres including, but not limited to, comedies , dramas, parodies , fantasies and/or science fiction . Satire may or may not use humor or other, non-humorous forms as an artistic vehicle to illuminate, explore, and critique social conditions, systems of power ("social, political, military, medical or academic institutions" ), hypocrisy , and other instances of human behavior . Film director Jonathan Lynn generally advises against marketing one's work as "satire" because according to Lynn it "can substantially reduce viewing figures and box office" due to

9490-424: The drive. Until floppy disks fell out of use, this was the most successful infection strategy and boot sector viruses were the most common in the "wild" for many years. Traditional computer viruses emerged in the 1980s, driven by the spread of personal computers and the resultant increase in bulletin board system (BBS), modem use, and software sharing. Bulletin board –driven software sharing contributed directly to

9620-423: The early scenes had been filmed; Judge told the studio that happier scenes would come later. Livingston says he heard they believed he was on drugs and were considering firing him. In addition, Fox did not like the gangsta rap music used in the film. Rothman told him he had to take it out, and Judge said after production he would do so if the next focus group also disliked it. A young man in that focus group said

9750-435: The effort to attract them). He had agreed to meet with Damon in New York, but then Ron Livingston 's agent asked if his client could audition for the lead. Casting director Nancy Klopper was impressed, and after Judge saw the video he told the studio that he wanted Livingston in the part. Jennifer Aniston was cast to accommodate Fox's desire to have a recognizable star in the film, although they were concerned that her part

9880-509: The encrypted virus body. To enable polymorphic code, the virus has to have a polymorphic engine (also called "mutating engine" or " mutation engine") somewhere in its encrypted body. See polymorphic code for technical detail on how such engines operate. Some viruses employ polymorphic code in a way that constrains the mutation rate of the virus significantly. For example, a virus can be programmed to mutate only slightly over time, or it can be programmed to refrain from mutating when it infects

10010-506: The extensions may be hidden from the user by default. This makes it possible to create a file that is of a different type than it appears to the user. For example, an executable may be created and named "picture.png.exe", in which the user sees only "picture.png" and therefore assumes that this file is a digital image and most likely is safe, yet when opened, it runs the executable on the client machine. Viruses may be installed on removable media, such as flash drives . The drives may be left in

10140-407: The fact that the characters worked in an office but listened to gangsta rap was one of the things he liked about the movie, and Rothman relented. The scene where Peter, Michael and Samir take their office printer out into a field and batter it to pieces was inspired by Judge's experience with his own printer while writing Beavis and Butt-head Do America . He told his cowriter Joe Stillman that he

10270-469: The film an average grade of "C+" on a scale ranging from A+ to F. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars and wrote that Judge "treats his characters a little like cartoon creatures. That works. Nuances of behavior are not necessary, because in the cubicle world every personality trait is magnified, and the captives stagger forth like grotesques." In his review for

10400-481: The film had reached people when strangers began associating them with their characters. Cole said that a year after release, on the service jobs he works when not acting, people began shouting dialogue from the movie at him. Aniston says that even today, when she is eating "at a certain type of restaurant", people will ask if she likes their flair. The cable channel Comedy Central premiered Office Space on August 5, 2001; that airing drew 1.4 million viewers. By 2003,

10530-456: The film's $ 12 million domestic gross, Judge decided to move on and began work on what eventually became Extract , a similarly themed followup to Office Space . Fox suggested that next time, he pay more heed to the studio's casting suggestions. However, he soon learned that the film had not gone unnoticed within the industry. " Jim Carrey invited me to his house. Chris Rock left me the best voicemail ever. I had dinner with Madonna ", who found

10660-429: The film's budget would not be large enough to consider bankable stars , the studio soon changed its mind. In the wake of the success of Good Will Hunting , he was advised to get that film's stars, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon . Again, he almost changed his mind about the film (Rothman said in 2019 that while A-list stars are often unlikely to take roles in low-budget productions, those films should nevertheless make

10790-473: The film. The setting of the film reflects a prevailing trend that Judge observed in the United States. "It seems like every city now has these identical office parks with identical adjoining chain restaurants", he said in an interview. "There were a lot of people who wanted me to set this movie in Wall Street , or like the movie Brazil , but I wanted it very unglamorous, the kind of bleak work situation like I

10920-580: The forerunner of the Internet , in the early 1970s. Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies in 1971. Creeper used the ARPANET to infect DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, "I'M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!" was displayed. The Reaper program

11050-495: The host program. When the program runs, the written virus program is executed first, causing infection and damage. By contrast, a computer worm does not need a host program, as it is an independent program or code chunk. Therefore, it is not restricted by the host program , but can run independently and actively carry out attacks. Virus writers use social engineering deceptions and exploit detailed knowledge of security vulnerabilities to initially infect systems and to spread

11180-561: The inevitable response that satirical films don't make money. This view is factually incorrect. Plenty have done so, if budgeted right. Film, more than television, offers advantages for satire, such as the "possibility of achieving the proper balance" between realism and non-realism , using the latter to communicate about the former. The ideal climate for a satirical film involves "fairly free" political conditions and/or independent producers with "modest" financial backing. UK USA Japan Computer virus This

11310-404: The infected file, or, the "read" request will be served with the uninfected version of the same file. The only reliable method to avoid "stealth" viruses is to boot from a medium that is known to be "clear". Security software can then be used to check the dormant operating system files. Most security software relies on virus signatures, or they employ heuristics . Security software may also use

11440-416: The infected host, it is entirely possible to decrypt the final virus, but this is probably not required, since self-modifying code is such a rarity that finding some may be reason enough for virus scanners to at least "flag" the file as suspicious. An old but compact way will be the use of arithmetic operation like addition or subtraction and the use of logical conditions such as XORing , where each byte in

11570-425: The kind of jokes you put in a 15-second television spot of somebody getting hit on the head with a frying pan. It's sly. And let me tell you, sly is hard to sell". Office Space was released on February 19, 1999, at the end of the release calendar's " dump months ", in 1,740 theaters, grossing $ 4.2 million on its opening weekend. That was eighth overall and second for new releases after October Sky . Herman said he

11700-403: The latest threats . This is because malicious hackers and other individuals are always creating new viruses. The German AV-TEST Institute publishes evaluations of antivirus software for Windows and Android. Examples of Microsoft Windows anti virus and anti-malware software include the optional Microsoft Security Essentials (for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7) for real-time protection,

11830-489: The list of system processes or by disguising itself within a trusted process. In the 2010s, as computers and operating systems grow larger and more complex, old hiding techniques need to be updated or replaced. Defending a computer against viruses may demand that a file system migrate towards detailed and explicit permission for every kind of file access. In addition, only a small fraction of known viruses actually cause real incidents, primarily because many viruses remain below

11960-407: The man from behind. The studio also had a man live in a Plexiglas cube above Times Square for five days, who was broadcast live on the Internet as he answered calls and emails from people dissatisfied with their jobs. Livingston, when he visited the cube for press events, found that most reporters preferred to talk to the man in the cube and not him. He was not surprised, as tracking for the movie

12090-466: The mid-1990s. Most of these viruses are written in the scripting languages for Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel and spread throughout Microsoft Office by infecting documents and spreadsheets . Since Word and Excel were also available for Mac OS , most could also spread to Macintosh computers . Although most of these viruses did not have the ability to send infected email messages , those viruses which did take advantage of

12220-451: The new portable executable (PE) files introduced in Windows 95. In late 1997 the encrypted, memory-resident stealth virus Win32.Cabanas was released—the first known virus that targeted Windows NT (it was also able to infect Windows 3.0 and Windows 9x hosts). Even home computers were affected by viruses. The first one to appear on the Amiga was a boot sector virus called SCA virus , which

12350-442: The next day, ignoring phone calls from Lumbergh and Anne, who angrily breaks up with him while confirming his suspicions that she has been cheating on him. Two business consultants are brought in to help the company downsize , and Peter begins dating Joanna. She works at a chain restaurant where she is required to wear "pieces of flair": buttons allowing employees to "express themselves". Her boss hassles her for not wearing more than

12480-466: The operating system when executed, after which it remains in RAM from the time the computer is booted up to when it is shut down. Resident viruses overwrite interrupt handling code or other functions , and when the operating system attempts to access the target file or disk sector, the virus code intercepts the request and redirects the control flow to the replication module, infecting the target. In contrast,

12610-413: The operating system. A virus can hide by intercepting the request to read the infected file, handling the request itself, and returning an uninfected version of the file to the antivirus software. The interception can occur by code injection of the actual operating system files that would handle the read request. Thus, an antivirus software attempting to detect the virus will either not be permitted to read

12740-483: The part. After casting the Indian American Ajay Naidu as Samir, who had originally been written as Iranian , the character was rewritten to be Jordanian , and Naidu worked with a dialect coach to get the accent right. John C. McGinley auditioned for Lumbergh, but was ultimately cast as Slydell. Judge says that after Gary Cole read for Lumbergh, there was no doubt as to who would play him. "He made

12870-504: The purpose of the websites is to sell antivirus products and services). Some websites—like Google subsidiary VirusTotal .com—allow users to upload one or more suspicious files to be scanned and checked by one or more antivirus programs in one operation. Additionally, several capable antivirus software programs are available for free download from the Internet (usually restricted to non-commercial use). Microsoft offers an optional free antivirus utility called Microsoft Security Essentials ,

13000-437: The required minimum. Peter eventually shows up to work and casually disregards office protocol, stealing Lumbergh's parking space, violating the dress code, and removing a cubicle wall that blocks his view out the window. Impressed by Peter's frank insights into Initech's problems, the consultants promote him despite Lumbergh's misgivings; however, Michael and Samir are both laid off. Milton is also expected to be laid off, but it

13130-409: The same day corrupted. Restore points from previous days should work, provided the virus is not designed to corrupt the restore files and does not exist in previous restore points. Microsoft's System File Checker (improved in Windows 7 and later) can be used to check for, and repair, corrupted system files. Restoring an earlier "clean" (virus-free) copy of the entire partition from a cloned disk ,

13260-401: The same exploits on large numbers of hosts. While Linux and Unix in general have always natively prevented normal users from making changes to the operating system environment without permission, Windows users are generally not prevented from making these changes, meaning that viruses can easily gain control of the entire system on Windows hosts. This difference has continued partly due to

13390-510: The second computer will also begin dialing random numbers, in search of yet another computer to program. The program rapidly spreads exponentially through susceptible computers and can only be countered by a second program called VACCINE. His story was based on an actual computer virus written in FORTRAN that Benford had created and run on the lab computer in the 1960s, as a proof-of-concept, and which he told John Brunner about in 1970. The idea

13520-399: The spread of Trojan horse programs, and viruses were written to infect popularly traded software. Shareware and bootleg software were equally common vectors for viruses on BBSs. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by other computers. Macro viruses have become common since

13650-498: The stapler and was as a result grateful it had been painted red. Swingline provided the stapler after the filmmakers could not get permission to use either the Boston or Bostitch brands from their manufacturer. Judge hated the onesheet poster that the studio created for Office Space , which depicted an office worker completely covered in Post-it notes . He said, "People were like, 'What

13780-474: The studio responded with Car Wash but "just set in an office." Milton was not the only character inspired by someone from Judge's past. During his jobs in Silicon Valley, where he barely made enough to afford his rent, he had a neighbor who was an auto mechanic. Not only did the man make more money, he had flexible work hours and seemed to Judge to be much more content with his life and work than he himself was. The neighbor inspired Lawrence, Peter's neighbor in

13910-414: The system for viruses. This can slow down productivity for regular workers. One may reduce the damage done by viruses by making regular backups of data (and the operating systems) on different media, that are either kept unconnected to the system (most of the time, as in a hard drive), read-only or not accessible for other reasons, such as using different file systems . This way, if data is lost through

14040-481: The tenth anniversary of the film. Rothman said in 2019 that despite his connection to several films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture , he hopes Office Space will be mentioned before them in his obituary . "[ Office Space ] spoke to a generation in a way that few movies have," said John Altschuler , who produced Extract , Judge's later companion piece. "Nobody does this kind of material. It's all about

14170-528: The theoretical epidemic threshold. While some kinds of antivirus software employ various techniques to counter stealth mechanisms, once the infection occurs any recourse to "clean" the system is unreliable. In Microsoft Windows operating systems, the NTFS file system is proprietary. This leaves antivirus software little alternative but to send a "read" request to Windows files that handle such requests. Some viruses trick antivirus software by intercepting its requests to

14300-413: The theory of self-replicating computer programs was done in 1949 by John von Neumann who gave lectures at the University of Illinois about the "Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata ". The work of von Neumann was later published as the "Theory of self-reproducing automata". In his essay von Neumann described how a computer program could be designed to reproduce itself. Von Neumann's design for

14430-523: The third act. David Herman was the only actor Judge had in mind for a specific part: Michael Bolton. Herman had been trying to leave his seven-year contract at MADtv , but the show would not let him. So, at its next table reading , he managed to get himself fired by screaming all his lines. Greg Daniels said they could always find a place for him on King of the Hill , where he had been doing some voice work; soon after he read Judge's Office Space script and

14560-599: The third day of shooting, temperatures had risen over 100 °F (38 °C), and smoke from fires in Mexico was filling the sky over Austin , making it white. Suhrstedt says that forced the postponement of the opening traffic-jam scene until it cleared. Studio executives who saw the dailies were not happy with the footage that Judge was getting. Judge quoted studio executives as stating, "More energy! More energy! We gotta reshoot it! You're failing! You're failing!" They also asked for Livingston to smile more. But at that point, only

14690-483: The traveler's checks, goes on vacation in Mexico where he still does not get the respect he needs. Office Space originated in the series of three animated Milton short films that Judge created about an office worker by that name. They first aired on Liquid Television and on Saturday Night Live . The inspiration came from a temp job which he had that involved alphabetizing purchase orders and another job as an engineer for Parallax Graphics for three months in

14820-521: The virus scanner will be unreliable, and that some instances of the virus may be able to avoid detection. To avoid being detected by emulation, some viruses rewrite themselves completely each time they are to infect new executables. Viruses that utilize this technique are said to be in metamorphic code . To enable metamorphism, a "metamorphic engine" is needed. A metamorphic virus is usually very large and complex. For example, W32/Simile consisted of over 14,000 lines of assembly language code, 90% of which

14950-440: The virus. To replicate itself, a virus must be permitted to execute code and write to memory. For this reason, many viruses attach themselves to executable files that may be part of legitimate programs (see code injection ). If a user attempts to launch an infected program, the virus' code may be executed simultaneously. In operating systems that use file extensions to determine program associations (such as Microsoft Windows),

15080-726: The virus. Viruses use complex anti-detection/stealth strategies to evade antivirus software . Motives for creating viruses can include seeking profit (e.g., with ransomware ), desire to send a political message, personal amusement, to demonstrate that a vulnerability exists in software, for sabotage and denial of service , or simply because they wish to explore cybersecurity issues, artificial life and evolutionary algorithms . As of 2013, computer viruses caused billions of dollars' worth of economic damage each year. In response, an industry of antivirus software has cropped up, selling or freely distributing virus protection to users of various operating systems . The first academic work on

15210-606: The weirdness of real people in real life." In a 2017 profile of Judge, New York Times Magazine writer Willy Staley observed that the film has been compared to Herman Melville 's short story " Bartleby, the Scrivener ", in which a lawyer's clerk, like Peter, shows up at the office one day but declines all work, telling his boss "I would prefer not to". Staley's own high school English teacher, he recalled, brought up Office Space in class to get students to appreciate how tedious Franz Kafka 's work at an insurance company was. "It's such

15340-438: The widespread use of administrator accounts in contemporary versions like Windows XP . In 1997, researchers created and released a virus for Linux—known as " Bliss ". Bliss, however, requires that the user run it explicitly, and it can only infect programs that the user has the access to modify. Unlike Windows users, most Unix users do not log in as an administrator, or "root user" , except to install or configure software; as

15470-424: The workforce in general. It was a box office disappointment, making $ 12.2 million on a $ 10 million production budget; however, it sold well on home video, and has become a cult film . Several aspects of the film have become Internet memes . A scene in which the three main characters systematically destroy a dysfunctional printer has been widely parodied. Swingline introduced a red stapler to its product line after

15600-472: Was created to delete Creeper. In 1982, a program called " Elk Cloner " was the first personal computer virus to appear "in the wild"—that is, outside the single computer or computer lab where it was created. Written in 1981 by Richard Skrenta , a ninth grader at Mount Lebanon High School near Pittsburgh , it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread via floppy disk . On its 50th use

15730-400: Was delighted with it. At the first read-through of the script, Judge was pleased with Herman's performance, and felt Stephen Root improved on his own take on Milton, but was not happy with the rest of the cast. He considered abandoning the film, but Rothman said it worked and just needed the right actors. According to Judge, while Fox at first told him to just get the best actors possible since

15860-488: Was detected in November 1987. A computer virus generally contains three parts: the infection mechanism, which finds and infects new files, the payload, which is the malicious code to execute, and the trigger, which determines when to activate the payload. Virus phases is the life cycle of the computer virus, described by using an analogy to biology . This life cycle can be divided into four phases: Computer viruses infect

15990-551: Was discovered in April 1992, two years after the release of Windows 3.0 . The virus did not contain any Windows API calls , instead relying on DOS interrupts . A few years later, in February 1996, Australian hackers from the virus-writing crew VLAD created the Bizatch virus (also known as "Boza" virus), which was the first known virus to specifically target Windows 95 . This virus attacked

16120-543: Was elated after seeing the film in Los Angeles and hearing it had made $ 7 million, until friends more familiar with the movie business told him that was considered a poor performance. Suhrstedt saw it later in Burbank , and the theater was almost full. He assured Judge that word of mouth would slowly increase the audience. However, in early March, Fox pulled it from three-quarters of the screens it had been on after it barely made

16250-450: Was in". Judge wrote a treatment in 1996, and the script after the first season of King of the Hill . Fox president Tom Rothman was happy with the draft as he was looking for lighter material to balance the event movies like Titanic that dominated the studio's output at the time. He considered it "the most brilliant workplace satire I'd ever read". Despite that, Judge hated the ending and wished he could have completely rewritten

16380-472: Was not good and "there was a foregone conclusion that it wasn't going to open well." Producer Michael Rotenberg elaborated that "[i]t took a few research screenings to realize that audiences often have issues with satire." Another problem that Rothman later conceded was that they could not put Aniston on the poster due to her small role. Later he admitted that the marketing campaign did not work and said, " Office Space isn't like American Pie . It doesn't have

16510-533: Was published by J. B. Gunn under the title "Use of virus functions to provide a virtual APL interpreter under user control" in 1984. The first IBM PC compatible virus in the "wild" was a boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain , created in 1986 and was released in 1987 by Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi in Lahore, Pakistan , reportedly to deter unauthorized copying of the software they had written. The first virus to specifically target Microsoft Windows , WinVir

16640-487: Was so frustrated by it that when he was done with the script he planned to take it out into a field and destroy it while videotaping the process. Suhrstedt says the whole sequence was largely improvised, but Naidu adds that they were trying to do it in a way that evoked how the Mafia would do it to someone it wanted to punish or kill; Livingston thus played his part like the " don ", circling behind Naidu and Herman while they struck

16770-401: Was so small; the subplot involving her battle with her boss over her "flair" was added as a result and she was written out of the sex-dream sequence, along with dialogue indicating she actually had slept with Lumbergh. However, she had liked the script since she was not getting many other films like that at that point, and she had gone to the same high school as Herman. Kate Hudson also read for

16900-688: Was very exacting in his demands for how the Initech set looked; he said regularly that it had to seem "oppressive". The production went as far as screen-testing different types of gray cubicles ; Judge also wanted the cubicles to be tall so that Lumbergh would have to lean in to be seen from Peter's desk. Considerable effort was also expended to making sure the TPS reports looked realistic. The glasses Root wore to play Milton had lenses so thick that he had to wear contact lenses to see through them. Even so, he still had no depth perception ; he had to practice reaching for

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