IRMSS907@SIVM.BITNET (01/12/90)
VIRUS ALERT: IBM-compatible personal computers The Vector: THE DESKTOP FRACTAL DESIGN SYSTEM (Michael F. Barnsley) The Desktop Fractal Design System by Michael F. Barnsley, Iterated Systems, Inc. (1989) is infected with a virus. The program is sold through Academic Press and is a companion program to Barnsley's textbook on fractals, "Fractals Everywhere". Academic Press is aware of the problem, and will replace the distribution disk with a clean copy if you return it to them. The virus does not seem to attach itself to the operating system, but increases the length of every .EXE file run after an infected program has been run. The only .EXE file whose length does not increase is the vector, SAT.EXE, the main program of The Desktop Fractal Design System. Other symptoms include displacement of blocks of text on the screen and total disruption of asynch communications. I have also seen "Stack overflow" errors in dBASE since I installed the infected program. I do not know if there are more serious delayed effects. I assume that this was an accidental infection before the program left Iterated Systems. I don't know whether Academic Press is making any effort to contact people who have purchased the program. It's a great program, and probably a lot of people will pass copies to their friends. Watch out for it!