Purge Virus
this specialized computer virus was developed by alien cultures who didn't want their technology shared with others. The planted the virus inside the programming of their equipment, and if another race's technology ever tried to interface with it, the equipment would dump the virus into the intruder's system. The virus then systematically ate away at the intruder's datacore. The damage could be contained by paying the virus' authors a fee for a translation database, which restored the intruder's datacore to its previous state.