ROsman%ASS%SwRI05@D15VS178A.SPACE.SwRI.EDU (01/16/91)
I got this message from one of our LAN administrators today. I suspect that the Guru's have already heard this, but, I've been watching this list for a long time and it was a REAL surprise to me. =========================================================================== forwarded message follows =========================================================================== I learned something new about the STONED virus today. One of our users' PCs was infected by the STONED virus by attempting to boot from a NON-bootable diskette that was infected! All MS/DOS diskettes (bootable and non-bootable) have a sector reserved for the boot code (the boot sector). I was under the impression that the DOS boot code had to be present (bootable) in order for the STONED virus to move itself to the hard disk. This was an incorrect assumption. This is what happened this morning: 1) Non-Bootable disk left in A: by mistake 2) System was rebooted 3) "Your PC has been Stoned" 4) "Non-System disk ... Remove and strike any key" 5) SCAN shows virus in boot sector of non-bootable floppy disk 6) SCAN shows virus in boot sector of C: *** It might be a good idea to start SCANing non-bootable floppy disks !!! =========================================================================== =========================================================================== After I got this message I dropped him a note asking whether he knew scan worked on non-bootable floppies. He indicated that it does. Oz (Rich Osman) INTERNET: Oz@SwRI.edu (512) 522-5050 (w); (512) 699-1302 (h, merciless machine) (512) 522-2572 (just the fax)