NightMare is a scareware

Scareware

Scareware comprises several classes of scam software with malicious payloads, or of limited or no benefit, that are sold to consumers via certain unethical marketing practices. The selling approach uses social engineering to cause shock, anxiety, or the perception of a threat, generally directed at...

program distributed on the Fish Disks for the Amiga computer (Fish #448). It is generally credited to be the first scareware program of its type.


The program was developed by Patrick Evans (Nobleton, Ontario, Canada) in 1991 and was free to redistribute, with source code available from the author.

Effects

When NightMare executes, it lies dormant for an extended period of time. Every five minutes, it changes the entire screen of the computer to an image of a skull while playing a horrifying shriek on the audio channels.