"easter egg" tiny red bug crawling around on 2016-05-12 on Acer v213h monitor for an hour

As the security administrator, I got a heart-wretching call that a single tiny red bug was crawling around on a user's screen. I found no running processes on the PC, so pulled the monitor and put it on another PC, and the tiny red bug (looking like a spider mite) was still there.

I excamined the very tiny red bug very closely and it was not real, the legs did not move, it couldn't be squashed and it did not react to light sources, and it's speed was consistent without pause, LOL!!

I think the Acer programmers put an easter egg in the monitor's software.

I did a monitor reset and also pulled the power for about 30 seconds, but plugging it back in, the bug was still there.

Again, this tiny red bug (like a spider mite) persisted on this single monitor no matter which computer I plugged into it.

After an hour or so it simply disappeared.

Acer, please confirm this "easter egg" I'm assuming they would code if for "after x hours of operation, run the crawling bug easter egg"

While it is funny now, it certainly was NOT FUNNY when I started investigating, worrying that we had a virus on our network.

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Blayn-Acer

Sorry for the problems you are having. We strive to produce products of the highest quality standards and do not incorporate easter eggs into our monitors. My only suggestion would be to check the on screen display settings to see if there is a feature called aim point, as this feature will put a red dot on the screen to assist with ingame aiming. If this feature is not present, my other suggestion would by to try different cabling, resetting the monitor via OSD settings, or possibly repair if that does not resolve the issue.

aimpoint.png

jneumann

No, it's not "aim point".

I've attached an image of what the "tiny spider/tiny red spider" looked like, except it was red, not black as the image appears.

It was about 1mm wide, of extremely fine detail, the legs were very thin. As it changed direction, the body rotated appropriately. It's movement was very smooth, not choppy. The give-away of it being an "easter egg" from some programmer is that its movement was of a consistent speed and the direction changes were instantaneous and the legs did not move.

It is something in the monitor's programming, just like the OSD the tiny red bug moved on top of the PC or video source's display (that looks like a spider mite but without moving legs).

Another person with an Acer P241W (mine is an Acer v213h) had the same issue:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1118711-spider-in-my-monitor-no-joke/page3

It is very similar to this guy's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TtZwpCy0oo

His bug stops & appears black whereas mine was clearly red (when over a white item) & mine never stopped moving for the hour or so it was present, moving at a consistent speed in random patterns -- the speed at which it moved was just like in the video.

I'm sure Acer probably buys some of the chips from other suppliers, so my guess it is in whatever chip controls the OSD or handles the menu button's presses.

I just don't want people freaking out like I did, spending an hour scanning for PC viruses...

acer_spider_easter_egg.jpg

jneumann

This video's bug behaves exactly as mine did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBdiQJSsQgU

J0HN

Hi,

This i found interesting.

There are other pics of little bugs posted by other people.

This is indeed electronic, and not a real life creature.

The weird thing is that this, and other pics from elsewhere
look very much like the legs are smaller than the pixels.

This puzzled me how the legs could possibly be thinner than pixels.

Until i remembered 'Sub Pixel Rendering'

It is possible to pick one of the three parts of a pixel,
so you might be able to have quite a thin line,
awkward but possible.

It is certainly very odd, and very interesting.

Regards, John Smiley Happy

jneumann

Yes J0HN, you are correct, the legs are thinner than the a single pixel generated by a PC, which was also a give-away that it was not a PC virus (of course, when I input a different PC and video source and the bug was still there, that verified it was not a PC virus too).

I also was perplexed at how the leg could be so thin, thinner than a single pixel from my PC's output of 1920x1080 -- and in fact the Monitor's own OSD is very pixelated (not smooth text).

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