leefi@microsoft.UUCP (Lee Fisher) (02/06/88)
Here is a message from Ross Greenberg, author of the FLUSHOT2 program that has recently made it's way across the net. (This is the utility that trys to prevent your COMMAND.COM from catching a "virus" that has been reported by some people.) Ross doesn't have usenet access, so I'm relaying this to the net for him. I would suggest that follow-up correspondance for this should go directly to him on his BBS at 212-889-6438. However, if you wish you could reply to me, I'll try my best to relay your message to Ross. > From Ross Greenberg, 2/5/88: > > "As the author of FLU_SHOT, allow me to explain what is happening and > what changes will be made for FLU_SHOT3. FLU_SHOT2 intercepts calls > for a format of the diskette (along with direct disk writes and a > host of other goodies) and displays it's warning message if the > caller is not actually the resident portion of DOS. Any program > you're running which attempts to write to the disk directly (such as > the FORMAT command or something like Norton Utilities or Disk Repair > will 'trigger' the response --- which makes sense. Of course *you* > know the operation is a good one. But FLU_SHOT doesn't. > > This doesn't solve the problem of people who wish to format their > disk, or whatever, and get the warning message. FLU_SHOT3, coming to > a Net or a BBS near you soon will! Although the message will still > appear upon a format operation, you'll have the chance to enter 'g' > to continue all susequent operations until the program executes an > exit. Such operation would be without interruption. Additionally, a > switch will allow you to specifically exclude some of the operations > which FLU_SHOT intercepts. > > If you've got specific suggestions regarding FLU_SHOT, or have > enhancements you'd like to make, please forward them to me via my BBS > at (212)-889-6438. > > As of date, eight different viruses have been uploaded to my board. > Some of them are pretty vile little critters....." Hope this helps someone, -Lee ________ 01001100 Lee Fisher, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA. 01000101 {uw-beaver,decvax,decwrl,trsvax,sun,attunix,uunet}!microsof!leefi 01000101 leefi@microsof.uucp 01000110 leefi@microsof.beaver.washington.edu 01001001 disclaimer: My opinions are my own, not those of my employer.