XRJDM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Joe McMahon) (05/31/89)
> ... I ran Interferon 3.1 and it showed a virus type 003 in my TOPS > file ... I hereby declare June "Stop Using Interferon and Use Disinfectant, Please" Month. TOPS uses a non-standard, unusual, but NOT illegal or viral, segmentation scheme. CODE 0 immediately jumps to another segment, which Interferon labels as a "sneak" (BTW: there is no such virus; it's just a made-up term). Interferon's check is too weak; it catches OK programs (like TOPS) and causes unnecessary heartburn and agonization. Disinfectant does not do this. It was an attempt to make a "predictive" detector which would alert you if it found something that looks like a virus. If you must have a predictive checker, try Steve Brecher's Repair program (available via anonymous FTP from sumex-aim.stanford.edu as /info-mac/virus/repair.hqx). It is supposedly able to detect clones of the nVIR virus and stomp them. It won't find anything else weird, though. --- Joe M.