STMONTG@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Sean T Montgomery) (11/23/88)
nVIR virus, will show up as being infected when Interferon 3.1 or lower and VirusDetective are run on a disk containing the KillVirus init. This is NOT because of KillVirus being infected; it is due to the presence of an nVIR resource in the init. This resource is used by the init to protect and remove the nVIR virus. The KillVirus init's nVIR resource is ID=10, and is named "Inhibitor" is you look at it in ResEdit. KillVirus is a good program, and does it's job well, far as I'm concerned. It should be available at the INFO-MAC servers. If you do find a KillVirus init that is truly infected, please let me know! Signed, a happy customer
ll12+@andrew.cmu.edu (Laura Ann Lemay) (11/26/88)
Kill Virus is not a prevention program, its a removal program. And it's the ONLY (yes, the ONLY -- I've done extensive testing) program that will completely remove and fix any applications or system files that have nVIR. Other programs, such as Vaccination and AntiPan will remove nVIR from applications, but don't touch the system, so you're right back where you started. KillVirus is an init that you put in your system folder. When you boot up with it, it removes nVIR from your system, if it's there. After that, if you run any application that has nVIR in it under that syustem, nVIR is removed and the program is fixed. It's all invisible and automatic, which is the main reason I recommend it for nVIR. There are two problems with it that might be confusing, tho. The INIT itself contains a "virus foil" that trips up Interferon -- it says the INIT is infected. THIS IS A FEATURE, NOT AN INFECTION. The other thing it does is install another virus foil in your system file. This is the nVIR 10 trick that the original programmer of nVIR put into the virus to stop infection. KillVirus puts it in your syustem file, which will make it totally immune to nVIR. It also trips up Interferon, however. To virus-detection authors: it would be nice if your programs ignored the nVIR 10 foil, since ALL KNOWN VERSIONS of nVIR use this ploy to make files immune. This would solve a lot of problems (it still makes me nervous every time I run intereferon on my hard drive and get and infected warning). I am not trying to confuse the issue -- I am trying to provide as much information as I possibly can. KillVirus is a nice program -- don't con- demn the author for using the resources that are there. I am the researcher and author of the complete guide to viruses, which is coming out soon (I hope). -Laura Lemay ll12+@andrew.cmu.edu
myers@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Franklin Myers) (12/23/88)
In article <6603@pucc.Princeton.EDU> STMONTG@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >... >...KillVirus is a good program, and does it's job well, >far as I'm concerned... > I had been satisfied with KillVirus until, all of the sudden, everytime I used MacWrite, it crashed at launching. After removing KillVirus and using Vaccination it was fine. Just an observation... Franklin Myers e-mail: myers@eniac.seas.upenn.edu