You can be sure that such a discovery would have made headlines all over the world. To the best of my knowledge, no antivirus researcher has ever discovered a virus that causes physical damage to hardware. My short and simple answer to the question is 'no'. In other cases, people were told by a repair technician that a virus had permanently damaged the hard drive, and they needed to purchase a new one. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a reader say 'A virus wiped out my hard drive, so I had to buy a new one and re-install everything.' When I ask what exactly they mean, the victim sometimes claim that a virus 'fried the electronics,' 'crashed the head,' or otherwise physically damaged the drive. Beware the Horrible, Terrible, Evil, Hard Drive Destructo Virus!
