OU75@PACE.BITNET (OU75000) (12/15/90)
hello all:
i could really use some help here on this one. there are a
number of students here (>20) that are experiencing the same problem
with wordperfect.
i will list the symptoms as they happen chronologically:
an * before a line means that some have had this happen...
*1. scan picks up a stoned infection on a floppy
2. students begin to have odd printing problems with wp
- extra pages inserted into text
- printout has top of first page, bottom of last page,
and then parts of the body
3. students have editing trouble with wordperfect where a document
is doubled or parts of it are appended to the end of itself.
4. when a directory search is performed on the disk there are some
very strange and unwanted files (some of zero length).
- one of these is joke.dbf
- another (always appearing at the end of the directory listing)
is "***ibm 3.1" as seen with the period in the text
the *** are garphics characters.
5. a look at the boot sector of these disks shows a very warped
number of sectors per cluster and a very strange number of dir
sectors. trying to look at the end of the dir sector with norton
ended with a very abrupt system crash. (could be a clever one)
6. the .dfb file is not in dbase format
the administration here has given me a copy of one *possibly*
infectious disk. we are unsure as of yet whether this is a virus
problem. i have heard some talk of a wordperfect-specific virus, but
i am not in the position to speculate.
i am not representing my school when i ask these questions. any
statements made by me are not to be construed as an official statement
of the school.
if anyone has seen something like this or can explain any of
these symptoms, please mail to me directly. i have quite a collection
of the known viruses as samples and none of the almost fifty of them
match or even resemble what i have been able to find on the disk. i
am also unaware of any virus exhibiting these symptoms. if you have
any comments, witt, or suggestions, please send to me...
thanx in advance...
- -chris