XRJDM@SCFVM.BITNET (Joe McMahon) (05/09/91)
Sigh. I will reiterate for those who do not yet know. 1) SNEAK is not a virus. It was an attempt by the author of Interferon to try to catch unnamed possible viruses. It looks for a certain pattern of jumps between code segments and labels that pattern a possible virus. It so happens that there may very well be reasons for a normal, non-viral program to use this pattern. As a matter of fact, TOPS *does*. Bingo, a false positive for the SNEAK virus. 2) Interferon has not had any work done on it for a long, long time. If it is your sole means of detecting viruses, you have a problem. You should get a copy of the latest version of Disinfectant *now*. There are at least 5 viruses that Interferon will not detect, not counting the 438 (OK, I exaggerate. Slightly.) variants of nVIR, which it does *not* detect in a generic way. Please. Tell your co-workers to dump Interferon *and* Vaccine, and to use Disinfectant and its INIT instead. You'll be much safer, and you won't have to deal with these false positives. --- Joe M.