[comp.virus] 4096 and 1260 Viruses

grinberg@bimacs.biu.ac.il (Dennis Grinberg) (02/01/90)

 Alan_J_Roberts@cup.portal.com writes:
>This is a forward from John McAfee:
. stuff deleted Topic is 4096 virus
>	We don't yet know the exact mechanisms used by this virus, but
>we do know it works.  No memory resident virus filter, or system virus
>scanner that we are aware of is able to prevent infection from this
>virus, or detect an infection after it has occurred - providing that
>the virus is active.  The only way, currently, that we know how to
>detect this virus is to look for its code in memory.

This is strange because I seem to recall SCAN55 detecting this virus
on a machine that I came across. Is my memory faulty?

ddb@ns.network.com (David Dyer-Bennet) (02/03/90)

John McAfee writes:
:	The strangest part of the virus is that it is also able to
:trap all other disk reads and writes, and whenever an infected file is
:accessed by any program, the virus performs a disinfection of the
:program on the fly.
 ^^^^^^^ infected file?

As a BBS sysop, I find this a particularly amusing feature: it assures
my users that anything downloaded from my BBS is not infected with
this class of virus!  The concept of BBS's as *the safest* source of
software (at least in this one regard) is rather amusing.

- --
David Dyer-Bennet, ddb@terrabit.fidonet.org
or ddb@network.com
or Fidonet 1:282/341.0, (612) 721-8967 9600hst/2400/1200/300
or terrabit!ddb@Lynx.MN.Org, ...{amdahl,hpda}!bungia!viper!terrabit!ddb