frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) (02/19/90)
A week ago I reported that version 1.08 of F-PROT would become available in a day or two - but unfortunately I have not been able to get it out the door until now. I apologize to everybody who has been waiting (in particular the 50 persons or so that I have promised a copy by E-mail), but I believe it was worth the wait. The reason for the delay was the arrival of 30 different virus variants from Bulgaria. As 26 of them were previously unknown, I had to write a number of new disinfectors - which has taken up most of my spare time the past week. I have also added code to detect and remove some other new viruses, like Devil's Dance, "1260", "E.D.V." and "Hallochen". Those of you having a copy of 1.07 can update it by adding the following new entries to the SIGN.TXT file: Dance BERj85djAtm5nmjXFAufHKK9H85FJcdKH9hO0Mn5adeD0535Ip New Vienna CVRmsm3je7W2jWGfkBBzbMdVnf7r9Ai3sYcyCyduVhSKEO New Vienna pVBmtjP5WtsnGfkb1Xwu1mfb5j7EqqOAAIvdFBIrkRjuxUZmcZZvR2 Pixel fBTMD5a5KdRMGEI4nROAAeJMhnDtHqQMpmNMU25MnME7Yq+Zfr Eddie-2 X7Jjsmsm7euUMCFun90jkFfuSISWK6icEfuo4KP97ul4MNwlObmt 512 JENmS5rMi5PFbjjjCdYV4-UjAUguForRGswWc8jf6ZyhE81rEMPo3V Old Yankee iEpMSjsmEmEY4Am4-upjU5357XVcxXA2mMDTG4TRUctKfNq-Wh E.D.V. 87u5djDjddmmFZ-d8MiRxONMAdTMBM7V5fgAAeJwNbZ4QMK6jmwLit Hallochen S7UjF5PMiiTm74Mo6RMqYY65jnm57KlIt8lqPKWm4ETQi3R5pMmBMf3u Version 1.07 is not able to handle the 1260 virus, since no ordinary identification string can be provided for it. I had to make some changes to the program itself. Other changes from 1.07 to 1.08: The F-DRIVER.SYS program did not display a message saying it had been installed, as stated in the documentation. This has been corrected. This answers the question from Scott D. Gregory - yes, it is working, even though it is only 1.5K in size. Well, actually version 1.08 is a bit longer, it is closer to 2K, but I just finished testing it and it stops every single virus in my collection, (which is one of the largest around). F-DLOCK.EXE contained a bug that prevented it from working with the CHKDSK program. This program could also cause some problems in other cases. This has now been corrected. F-OSCHK would display a warning message in Icelandic, if it found that a change had been made to the operating system - I has forgotten a "#ifdef ENGLISH" somewhere. This has been corrected. SIGN.TXT does no longer have to be in the current directory - it may also be located in the same directory as the F-FCHK program. Finally - a reply to Ron Warren Evans. > He points out that F-PROT is virtually unknown in the U.S., That's true - I only finished the English version a short time ago, but the Icelandic version has been on sale for several months now and has been very successful here in Iceland. The market here is however very small, only 0.1 % of the U.S. market. > is produced by a lone Icelandic programmer, How true - sometimes I wish I was a huge multinational corporation :-) > is untested here Well, not quite - several people have been playing with it for a few months. Anyhow - most of the bugs should be gone by now - the people here in Iceland who bought versions 1.00 to 1.06 probably managed to find most of them. :-) > and may not be well-supported. Well, that depends on what kind of support you want - If you are looking for a product that comes with a 24-hour hotline support and on-site servicing you should look elsewhere. However - you would have to pay more than what I am asking for. I am just trying to provide powerful programs, able to catch all known viruses and remove them. I believe my programs contain some useful features, not found elsewhere, although they are not perfect. They could be made easier to install, perhaps intergrated in one package, but I will not make changes like that until I write version 2.0. Support - well, for now, E-mail will just have to do.... :-) - -- Fridrik Skulason, University of Iceland E-Mail: frisk@rhi.hi.is Technical Editor, Virus Bulletin (UK). Fax: 354-1-28801