VIRUS-L/comp.virus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) v2.00
Nick FitzGerald
Last-modified: 9 October 1995, 11:00 AM NZD
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Frequently Asked Questions on Virus-L/comp.virus
Release 2.00
Last Updated: 9 October 1995, 11:00 AM NZD
=========================
= Using this FAQ sheet: =
=========================
This document is intended to answer some Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) about computer viruses. This FAQ sheet has been compiled by some
of the main contributors to the Virus-L mailing list and its USENET news
fan-out, comp.virus. The Preface Section (below) explains the multi-
part nature of the FAQ sheet and how to ensure you have "the genuine
article", and gives details on version numbers and contacting the
authors with questions and suggestions. If you are seeking help after
discovering what you suspect is a virus on your computer, read the
Preface Section, skim through Sections A and B for the essential jargon,
then concentrate on Section C.
If you feel that you may have found a new virus, or are not quite sure
if some file or boot sector is infected, please refer to Section F
Question #4 (F4) before posting a request for assistance. The answer to
this question has been developed to ensure new readers of Virus-L/
comp.virus understand the protocol for raising such questions and to
help them avoid asking questions that can be answered in this document.
If you are looking for help in designing and implementing an antivirus
policy or system, read all of Sections B through F inclusive, paying
particular attention to Section D.
Please read the full list of questions carefully--as with most complex
topics, dozens of different virus-related questions turn out to be about
similar phenomena. If you don't find your exact question here, look
closely at the ones that seem vaguely similar.
Above all, remember that the time to really worry about viruses is
*before* your computer gets one!
====================
= Preface Section: =
====================
The Virus-L/comp.virus FAQ sheet is normally posted to on-line services
and sent via e-mail in one of two forms: As a single, large (>160KB)
file, or in four separate pieces. Either or both of these forms may be
available for download from FTP sites and BBSes.
The one-piece FAQ sheet should be available in a file called
vlfaqxyy.txt, where "xyy" is the current version number (starting from
200 in mid-1995 for version 2.00). The multi-part version is created by
splitting the main FAQ sheet into four pieces as follows:
Filename Contains
FAQ Sections
==============================
vlfxyy-1.txt A & B
vlfxyy-2.txt C & D
vlfxyy-3.txt E & F
vlfxyy-4.txt G
(with "xyy" again representing the current version number). Please do
not make your own multi-part FAQ, as each of the parts in the "official"
multi-part version include additional preface information.
Either or both versions may also be available in some form of compressed
archive--in this case the "name part" of the filename should be the same
as the original file with the extension being replaced (or appended) as
appropriate for the archiving method used. Please *do not* repackage
the multi-part FAQ into one large archive file, as this defeats the sole
purpose for creating it--to ensure that the FAQ sheet is "officially"
available in a readable form that will pass unmolested through most
e-mail gateways.
All the files in either version of the FAQ sheet are signed with Nick
FitzGerald's PGP key. Nick's public key can be retrieved from the main
PGP key servers. If you do not know what PGP is, but wish to validate
your copy of the FAQ sheet, you should read the USENET newsgroup
alt.security.pgp [please do *not* e-mail me, as I am not a PGP expert--
FAQ maintainer].
The FAQ sheet is a dynamic document, changing as people's questions
change. The version number also changes as *any* changes are made.
Version numbers containing a "d" are drafts and should *not* be made
publicly available, nor distributed. We ask for your cooperation in
deleting and not further distributing "d" versions of the FAQ sheet. If
you have any questions or contributions, please e-mail them to the FAQ
sheet maintainer, Nick FitzGerald, at:
n.fitz...@csc.canterbury.ac.nz
The most recent copy of the FAQ sheet will always be available on the
Virus-L/comp.virus archives, including by anonymous FTP on corsa.ucr.edu
(IP = 138.23.166.133) in the directory pub/virus-l.
A WWW version of the FAQ sheet, with cross-references and file links is
currently under development, as is a WinHelp version with cross-
references (if you would like to assist with these efforts, or to port
one of these formats to another popular hypertext help format, please
contact the FAQ sheet maintainer so we can better coordinate this work).
In various places the FAQ sheet mentions products by name. This is
usually only for illustrative purposes. Such references should *not* be
taken to imply that all, some, or any of the contributors to this FAQ
sheet endorse any such product for any purpose or that such products are
the *best* examples of what is being discussed. Such refernces are
usually because the products named were the first to implement a
particular feature or function. Further, that a given product is *not*
mentioned in the FAQ should not be taken as an indication of its quality
or suitability for any task.
Various brand and product names are used throughout the FAQ sheet--these
remain trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
Unless indicated otherwise, prices are given in US dollars and should be
taken as guides only. Telephone numbers include an indication of the
time-zone relative to GMT--some of these are very approximate, but
should be close enough to save you ringing in the middle of the
receiver's night!
Nick FitzGerald, Virus-L/comp.virus FAQ sheet maintainer.
================================================
= Primary contributors (in alphabetical order) =
================================================
The following people have provided significant content and/or editorial
input to this FAQ sheet:
Mark Aitchison <m.ait...@phys.canterbury.ac.nz>
Vaughan Bell <vau...@computing-department.poly-south-west.ac.uk>
Claude Bersano-Hayes <ha...@urvax.urich.edu>
Matt Bishop <matt....@dartmouth.edu>
Vesselin Bontchev <bont...@complex.is>
Bruce Burrell <b...@us.itd.umich.edu>
David Chess <ch...@watson.ibm.com>
John-David Childs <con...@lewis.umt.edu>
Olivier M. J. Crepin-Leblond <o.crepin...@ic.ac.uk>
Nick FitzGerald <n.fitz...@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Richard Ford <viru...@vax.ox.ac.uk>
Alan Glover <agl...@acorn.co.uk>
Sarah Gordon <sgo...@dockmaster.ncsc.mil>
Yaron Y. Goland <ygo...@seas.ucla.edu>
Mikko Hypponen <mikko.h...@datafellows.fi>
John Kida <john...@ins.com>
Kevin Marcus <dat...@cs.ucr.edu>
Anthony Naggs <to...@vps.cis.co.za>
Donald G. Peters <Pet...@Dockmaster.NCSC.Mil>
A. Padgett Peterson <padgett%tccsl...@mmc.com>
Y. Radai <ra...@hujivms.huji.ac.il>
Brian Seborg <bse...@fdic.gov>
Fridrik Skulason <fr...@complex.is>
Rob Slade <rob...@decus.ca> or <rsl...@sfu.ca>
Gene Spafford <sp...@cs.purdue.edu>
Otto Stolz <rzo...@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
Ken van Wyk <kr...@assist.mil>
====================
Questions answered in this document
Section A: Sources of Information and Antivirus Software
(Where can I find HELP?!!)
A1) What is Virus-L/comp.virus?
A2) What is the difference between Virus-L and comp.virus?
A3) How do I get onto or off Virus-L/comp.virus?
A4) What are the guidelines for Virus-L?
A5) How can I get back-issues of Virus-L?
A6) What are the known viruses, their names, major symptoms and
possible cures?
A7) Where can I get free or shareware antivirus programs?
A8) Where can I get more information on viruses, etc?
A9) Why is so much of the discussion in Virus-L/comp.virus about PCs
and DOS? Is this forum only for the PC world?
Section B: Definitions
(What is ...?)
B1) What are computer viruses (and why should I worry about them)?
B2) What is a Worm?
B3) What is a Trojan Horse?
B4) What are the main types of PC viruses?
B5) What is a stealth virus?
B6) What is a polymorphic virus?
B7) What are "fast" and "slow" infectors?
B8) What is a sparse infector?
B9) What is a companion virus?
B10) What is an armored virus?
B11) What is a cavity virus?
B12) What is a tunnelling virus?
B13) What is a dropper?
B14) What is an ANSI bomb?
B15) Miscellaneous Jargon and Abbreviations
Section C: Virus Detection
(Is my computer infected? What do I do?)
C1) What are the symptoms and indications of a virus infection?
C2) What steps should be taken in diagnosing and identifying viruses?
C3) What is the best way to remove a virus?
C4) What does the <insert name here> virus do?
C5) What are "false positives" and "false negatives"?
C6) Can an antivirus program itself be infected?
C7) Where can I get a virus scanner for my Unix system?
C8) Why does my scanner report an infection only sometimes?
C9) I think I have detected a new virus; what do I do?
C10) CHKDSK reports 639K (or less) total memory on my system; am I
infected?
C11) I have an infinite loop of sub-directories on my hard drive; am I
infected?
C12) Can a PC not running DOS be infected with a common DOS virus?
C13) My hard-disk's file system has been garbled: Do I have a virus?
Section D: Protection Plans
(What should I do to prepare against viruses?)
D1) What is the best antivirus program?
D2) Is it possible to protect a computer system with only software?
D3) Is it possible to write-protect the hard disk with software only?
D4) What can be done with hardware protection?
D5) Does setting a file's attributes to READ ONLY protect it from
viruses?
D6) Do password/access control systems protect my files from viruses?
D7) Do the protection systems in DR DOS work against viruses?
D8) Does a write-protect tab on a floppy disk stop viruses?
D9) Do local area networks (LANs) help to stop viruses or do they
facilitate their spread?
D10) What is the proper way to make backups?
Section E: Facts and Fibs About Computer Viruses
(Can a virus...?)
E1) Can boot sector viruses infect non-bootable DOS floppy disks?
E2) Can a virus hide in a PC's CMOS memory?
E3) Can a PC virus hide in Extended or in Expanded RAM in a PC?
E4) Can a virus hide in a PC's Upper Memory or its High Memory Area?
E5) Can a virus infect data files?
E6) Can viruses spread from one type of computer to another?
E7) Are mainframe computers susceptible to computer viruses?
E8) Some people say that disinfecting files is a bad idea. Is that
true?
E9) Can I avoid viruses by avoiding shareware, free software or games?
E10) Can I contract a virus on my PC by performing a "DIR" of an
infected floppy disk?
E11) Is there any risk in copying data files from an infected floppy
disk to a clean PC's hard disk?
E12) Can a DOS virus survive and spread on an OS/2 system using the
HPFS file system?
E13) Under OS/2 2.0+, could a virus infected DOS session infect another
DOS session?
E14) Can normal DOS viruses work under MS Windows?
E15) Can I get a virus from reading e-mail, BBS message forums or
USENET News?
E16) Can a virus "hide" in a GIF or JPEG file?
Section F: Miscellaneous Questions
(I have heard... I was just wondering...)
F1) How many viruses are there?
F2) How do viruses spread so quickly?
F3) What is the correct plural of "virus"? "Viruses" or "viri" or
"virii" or "vira" or...
F4) When reporting a virus infection (and looking for assistance), what
information should be included?
F5) How often should we upgrade our antivirus tools to minimize
software and labor costs and maximize our protection?
F6) What are "virus simulators" and what use are they?
F7) I've heard talk of "good viruses". Is it really possible to use a
computer virus for something useful?
F8) Wouldn't adding self-checking code to your programs be a good idea?
Section G: Specific Virus and Antivirus Software Questions...
G1) I was infected by the Jerusalem virus and disinfected the infected
files with my favorite antivirus program. However, WordPerfect
and some other programs still refuse to work. Why?
G2) Is my disk infected with the Stoned virus?
G3) I was told that the Stoned virus displays the text "Your PC is now
Stoned" at boot time. I have been infected by this virus several
times, but have never seen the message. Why?
G4) I was infected by both Stoned and Michelangelo. Why has my
computer become unbootable? And why, each time I run my favorite
scanner, does it find one of the viruses and say that it is
removed, but when I run it again, it says that the virus is still
there?
G5) My scanner finds the Filler and/or Israeli Boot virus in memory,
but after I boot from a clean floppy it reports no viruses. Am I
infected?
G6) I was infected with Flip and now a large part of my hard disk
seems to have disappeared. What has happened?
G7) What does the GenB and/or the GenP virus do?
G8) How do I "boot from a clean floppy"?
G9) My PC diagnostic utility lists "Cascade" amongst the hardware
interrupts (IRQs). Does this mean I have the Cascade virus?
G10) Occasionally the text "welcome datacomp" appears in my Mac
documents without me typing it. Is this a virus?
G11) How good are the antivirus tools included with MS-DOS 6?
G12) When I do a "DIR | MORE", I see two files with random names that
are not there when I just use "DIR". On my friends's system they
cannot be seen. Do I have a virus?
G13) What is the ChipAway virus? (Or ChipAwayVirus?)
===============================================================
= Section A. Sources of Information and Antivirus Software. =
===============================================================
A1) What is Virus-L/comp.virus?
Virus-L and comp.virus are discussion forums which focus on computer
virus issues. More specifically, Virus-L is an electronic mailing list
and comp.virus is a USENET newsgroup. Both groups are moderated; all
submissions are sent to the moderator who decides if a submission should
be distributed to the groups. For more information, including a copy of
the posting guidelines, see the file virus-l.README, available by
anonymous FTP on corsa.ucr.edu in the pub/virus-l directory.
A2) What is the difference between Virus-L and comp.virus?
Virus-L is a mailing list while comp.virus is a newsgroup. Virus-L is
distributed in "digest" format (with multiple e-mail postings in one
large digest) and comp.virus is distributed as individual news postings.
However, the content of the two groups is identical.
A3) How do I get onto or off Virus-L/comp.virus?
To subscribe to Virus-L, send e-mail to LIST...@LEHIGH.EDU saying "SUB
VIRUS-L your-name". For example:
SUB VIRUS-L Jane Doe
To be removed from the Virus-L mailing list, send a message to
LIST...@LEHIGH.EDU saying "SIGNOFF VIRUS-L".
To "subscribe" to comp.virus, simply use your favorite USENET news
reader to read the group.
A4) What are the guidelines for Virus-L?
The posting guidelines are available by anonymous FTP on corsa.ucr.edu.
Retrieve the file pub/virus-l/virus-l.README for the most recent copy.
In general, however, the moderator requires discussions to be polite and
non-commercial. Objective postings of product availability, product
reviews, etc, are fine, but commercial advertisements are not. Requests
for virus samples (binary or disassembly) are forbidden. Technical
discussions are strongly encouraged, however, within reason.
A5) How can I get back-issues of Virus-L?
Back-issues of Virus-L/comp.virus date back to the group's inception, on
21 April, 1988. The anonymous FTP archive at cs.ucr.edu carries all of
the Virus-L back issues. Retrieve the file pub/virus-l/README for more
information on the Virus-L/comp.virus archives.
A6) What are the known viruses, their names, major symptoms and
possible cures?
The reader should be aware that there is no universally accepted naming
convention for viruses, nor is there any standard means of testing. As
a consequence nearly *all* virus information is highly subjective and
open to interpretation and dispute.
There are several major sources of information on specific viruses.
Probably the largest one is Patricia Hoffman's hypertext VSUM. While
VSUM is quite complete it only covers PC viruses and it is regarded by
many in the antivirus field as being inaccurate, so we advise you not to
rely solely on it. It can be downloaded from most major archive sites.
A more precise source of information is the Computer Virus Catalog,
published by the Virus Test Center in Hamburg. It contains highly
technical descriptions of computer viruses for several platforms: DOS,
Mac, Amiga, Atari ST and Unix. Unfortunately, the DOS section is quite
incomplete. The CVC is available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (IP = 134.100.4.42), directory
pub/virus/texts/catalog. (A copy of the CVC is also available by
anonymous FTP on corsa.ucr.edu in the directory pub/virus-l/docs/vtc.)
Another small collection of good technical descriptions of PC viruses,
called CARObase is also available from ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de, in
the directory /pub/virus/texts/carobase.
A fourth source of information is the monthly Virus Bulletin, published
in the UK. Among other things, it gives detailed technical information
on viruses (see A8); a one year subscription, however, costs $395. US
subscriptions can be ordered by calling (203) 431 8720 (GMT-5/-4) or
writing to 590 Danbury Road, Ridgefield, CT 06877; for European
subscriptions, the number is +44 1235 555139 (GMT+0/-1) and the address
is: 21 The Quadrant, Abingdon, OXON, OX14 3YS, ENGLAND. General
enquiries can be sent to viru...@vax.ox.ac.uk.
Another source of information is the book "Virus Encyclopedia" which is
part of the printed documentation of Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus ToolKit (a
commercial DOS antivirus program). It is more complete than the CVC
list and just as accurate; however it lists only DOS viruses. This book
may be available separately
The on-line help system of the shareware antivirus product Anti-Virus
Pro contains a large and relatively exact collection of virus
descriptions and even includes demonstrations of several of the audio
and visual effects produced by some viruses. However the text can be
difficult to read because English is not the author's native tongue.
The WWW site www.datafellows.fi has an on-line, cross-referenced
database containing descriptions of about 1500 PC viruses, with an
emphasis on viruses "in the wild". Another network-accessible source of
information pertaining to viruses is provided by IBM AntiVirus, at
http://www.brs.ibm.com/ibmav.html or via gopher at the site
index.almaden.ibm.com (choose "IBM Computer Virus Information Center"
from the main menu).
An excellent source of information regarding Apple Macintosh viruses is
the on-line documentation in the freeware Disinfectant program by John
Norstad of Northwestern University. This is available at most Mac
archive sites.
A7) Where can I get free or shareware antivirus programs?
The Virus-L/comp.virus archive sites carry publicly distributable
antivirus software products. Up-to-date listings of these antivirus
archive sites are posted monthly to Virus-L/comp.virus (see A5 for
details).
Many freeware/shareware DOS antivirus programs are available from the
SimTel Software Repository. This collection of software is available
via anonymous FTP from ftp.coast.net (IP = 141.210.10.117), with
antivirus software in the directory /SimTel/msdos/virus. Note that the
SimTel archive is "mirrored" at many anonymous FTP sites, including
wuarchive.wustl.edu (IP = 128.252.135.4, /systems/ibmpc/simtel/virus),
and nic.funet.fi (IP = 128.214.248.6, /pub/msdos/SimTel/virus). Most of
this software can also be obtained via e-mail in uuencoded form from
various TRICKLE sites, especially in Europe.
Likewise, Macintosh antivirus programs can be found in /pub/tools/mac at
coast.cs.purdue.edu.
A list of many antivirus programs, including commercial products and one
person's rating of them, can be obtained by anonymous ftp from
corsa.ucr.edu (IP = 138.23.166.33) in pub/virus-l/docs/reviews in the
file slade.quickref.rvw. This directory also contains detailed product
reviews of many products.
A8) Where can I get more information on viruses, etc?
Five very good books on computer viruses that cover most of the
introductory and technical questions you might have are:
"Computers Under Attack: Intruders, Worms and Viruses" edited by
Peter J. Denning, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1990. This is a
book of collected readings that discuss computer viruses,
computer worms, break-ins, and social aspects, and many other
items related to computer security and malicious software. A
very solid, readable collection that doesn't require a highly-
technical background. Price: $20.50.
"Rogue Programs: Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses" edited by Lance
J. Hoffman, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990. This is a book of
collected readings describing in detail how viruses work,
where they come from, what they do, etc. It also has
material on worms, Trojan Horse programs, and other malicious
software programs. This book focuses more on mechanism and
relatively less on social aspects than does the Denning book;
however, there is an excellent piece by Anne Branscomb that
covers legal aspects. Price: $32.95.
"A Pathology of Computer Viruses" by David Ferbrache, Springer-
Verlag, 1992. This is an in-depth book on the history,
operation, and effects of computer viruses. It is one of the
most complete books on the subject, with an extensive history
section, a section on Macintosh viruses, network worms, and
Unix viruses. Price $49.00.
"A Short Course on Computer Viruses", 2nd edition, by Dr. Fred B.
Cohen, Wiley, 1994. This book is by a well-known pioneer in
virus research, who has also written dozens of technical
papers on the subject. Price: $35.00 ($45.00 with
accompanying diskette).
"Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses", by Robert Slade,
Springer-Verlag, 1994. This book is a comprehensive
introduction to computer viruses, written in a clear and easy
style for non-experts. Price $29.00.
A somewhat dated, but still useful, high-level description of viruses,
suitable for a complete novice with little computer background is
"Computer Viruses: Dealing with Electronic Vandalism and Programmed
Threats" by Eugene H. Spafford, Kathleen A. Heaphy, and David J.
Ferbrache, ITAA (Arlington, VA), 1989. ITAA (Information Technology
Association of America) is a computer industry service organization and
not a publisher. While many people have indicated they find this a very
understandable reference it is now out of print, but portions of it have
been reprinted in many other places, including Denning and Hoffman's
books (above).
It is also worth consulting various publications such as _Computers &
Security_ and _SECURE Computing_ (both of which, while not limited to
viruses, contain many relevant papers) and the _Virus Bulletin_
(published in the UK, it contains many technical articles).
A9) Why is so much of the discussion in Virus-L/comp.virus about PCs
and DOS? Is this forum only for the PC world?
No--neither the problem nor this discussion relate only to PCs. Viral
programs are a property of general-purpose computers, and therefore are,
and will be, a problem for any computer system. We *are* aware of the
lopsided coverage and welcome the submission of material relevant to
other systems.
There are several reasons for the apparent imbalance. One very general
reason is that users of DOS heavily outnumber the users of other
operating systems. The discussion in Virus-L/comp.virus therefore tends
to have a preponderance of questions and chat about DOS specific
infections and problems. We welcome questions, comments and reports
from users of other operating systems and platforms. If you use a
computer of another type, please do contribute to the discussion. Just
because the majority are talking about DOS does *not* mean that your
contribution is not welcome. It may be important precisely because you
have a different perspective.
Therefore, let us assure you there is no deliberate attempt being made
to exclude Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, OS/2, UNIX, VMS, Windows (NT, '95 or
any other flavor) or any other platform or operating system from the
discussion or the FAQ sheet. If you feel that there *is* too much PC
bias, please don't complain about it--tell us something about the virus
situation on *your* system.
====================================================
= Section B. Definitions and General Information =
====================================================
B1) What are computer viruses (and why should I worry about them)?
Fred Cohen "wrote the book" on computer viruses, through his Ph.D.
research, dissertation and various related scholarly publications. He
developed a theoretical, mathematical model of computer virus behaviour,
and used this to test various hypotheses about virus spread. Cohen's
formal definition (model) of a virus does not easily translate into
"human language", but his own, well-known, informal definition is "a
computer virus is a computer program that can infect other computer
programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly
evolved) copy of itself". Note that a program does not have to perform
outright damage (such as deleting or corrupting files) in order to be
classified as a "virus" by this definition.
The problem with Cohen's human language definition is that it doesn't
capture many of the subtleties of his mathematical model--as indeed, few
informal definitions do--and questions arise that can only be answered
by checking his formal model. Using his formal definitions, Cohen
classifies some things as viruses that most readers of Virus-L/
comp.virus (and many experts) would not consider viruses. For example,
given certain circumstances on an IBM PC running DOS, the DISKCOPY
program is classified as a virus by Cohen's formalisms.
This has led to some tension between what Cohen considers a "virus" and
what is usually discussed on Virus-L. Several other definitions of
"virus" have been proposed, but it is probably fair to say that most of
us are concerned about things that are viruses by the following
definition:
A computer virus is a self-replicating program containing code that
explicitly copies itself and that can "infect" other programs by
modifying them or their environment such that a call to an infected
program implies a call to a possibly evolved copy of the virus.
Probably the major distinction between Cohen's definition and "viruses"
as we tend to use the word is that we see them as deliberately designed
to replicate (although there is some debate over this too). Cohen's
definition does *not* require this (and this would be difficult to build
into his formal model).
Note that many people use the term "virus" loosely to cover any sort of
program that tries to hide its possibly malicious function and\or tries
to spread onto as many computers as possible, though some of these
programs may more correctly be called "worms" (see B2) or "Trojan
Horses" (see B3). Also be aware that what constitutes a "program" for a
virus to infect may include a lot more than is at first obvious--don't
assume too much about what a virus can or can't do!
These software "pranks" are very serious; they are spreading faster than
they are being stopped, and even the least harmful of viruses could be
life-threatening. For example, in the context of a hospital life-
support system, a virus that "simply" stops a computer and displays a
message until a key is pressed, could be fatal. Further, those who
create viruses can not halt their spread, even if they wanted to. It
requires a concerted effort from computer users to be "virus-aware",
rather than continuing the ambivalence that has allowed computer viruses
to become such a problem.
Computer viruses are actually a special case of something known as
"malicious logic" or "malware", and other forms of malicious logic are
also discussed in Virus-L/comp.virus. It can be important to understand
the distinctions between viruses and these other forms of malware.
B2) What is a Worm?
A computer WORM is a self-contained program (or set of programs), that
is able to spread functional copies of itself or its segments to other
computer systems (usually via network connections).
Note that unlike viruses, worms do not need to attach themselves to a
host program. There are two types of worms--host computer worms and
network worms.
Host computer worms are entirely contained in the computer they run on
and use network connections only to copy themselves to other computers.
Host computer worms where the original terminates itself after launching
a copy on another host (so there is only one copy of the worm running
somewhere on the network at any given moment), are sometimes called
"rabbits."
Network worms consist of multiple parts (called "segments"), each
running on different machines (and possibly performing different
actions) and using the network for several communication purposes.
Propagating a segment from one machine to another is only one of those
purposes. Network worms that have one main segment which coordinates
the work of the other segments are sometimes called "octopuses."
The infamous Internet Worm (perhaps covered best in "The Internet Worm
Program: An Analysis," Eugene H. Spafford, Purdue Technical Report CSD-
TR-823) was a host computer worm, while the Xerox PARC worms were
network worms (a good starting point for these is "The Worm Programs--
Early Experience with a Distributed Computation," Communications of the
ACM, 25, no.3, March 1982, pp. 172-180).
B3) What is a Trojan Horse?
A TROJAN HORSE is a program that does something undocumented that the
programmer intended, but that some users would not approve of if they
knew about it. According to some people, a virus is a particular case
of a Trojan Horse, namely one which is able to spread to other programs
(i.e., it turns them into Trojans too). According to others, a virus
that does not do any deliberate damage (other than merely replicating)
is not a Trojan. Finally, despite the definitions, many people use the
term "Trojan" to refer only to *non-replicating* malware, so that the
set of Trojans and the set of viruses are disjoint.
B4) What are the main types of PC viruses?
Generally, there are two main classes of viruses. The first class
consists of the FILE INFECTORS which attach themselves to ordinary
program files. These usually infect arbitrary COM and/or EXE programs,
though some can infect any program for which execution or interpretation
is requested, such as SYS, OVL, OBJ, PRG, MNU and BAT files. There is
also at least one PC virus that "infects" source code files by inserting
code into C language source files that replicates the virus's function
in any executable that is produced from the infected source code files
(see E5 for a more detailed discussion of the issue of "executable"
code).
File infectors can be either DIRECT-ACTION or RESIDENT. A direct-action
virus selects one or more programs to infect each time a program
infected by it is executed. A resident virus installs itself somewhere
in memory (RAM) the first time an infected program is executed, and
thereafter infects other programs when *they* are executed (as in the
case of the Jerusalem virus) or when other conditions are fulfilled.
Direct-action viruses are also sometimes referred to as NON-RESIDENT.
The Vienna virus is an example of a direct-action virus. Most viruses
are resident.
The second main category of viruses is SYSTEM or BOOT-RECORD INFECTORS:
these viruses infect executable code found in certain system areas on a
disk. On PCs there are ordinary boot-sector viruses, which infect only
the DOS boot sector, and MBR viruses which infect the Master Boot Record
on fixed disks and the DOS boot sector on diskettes. Examples include
Brain, Stoned, Empire, Azusa and Michelangelo. All common boot sector
and MBR viruses are memory resident.
To confuse this classification somewhat, a few viruses are able to
infect both files and boot sectors (the Tequila virus is one example).
These are often called "MULTI-PARTITE" viruses, though there has been
criticism of this name; another name is "BOOT-AND-FILE" virus.
Aside from the two main classes described above, many antivirus
researchers distinguish either or both of the following as distinct
classes of virus:
FILE SYSTEM or CLUSTER viruses (e.g. Dir-II) are those that modify
directory table entries so that the virus is loaded and executed before
the desired program is. The program itself is not physically altered,
only the directory entry of the program file is. Some consider these to
be a third category of viruses, while others consider them to be a sub-
category of the file infectors. LINK virus is another term occasionally
used for these viruses, though it should be avoided, as "link virus" is
commonly used in the Amiga world to mean "file infecting virus."
KERNEL viruses target specific features of the programs that contain the
"core" (or "kernel") of an operating system (3APA3A is a DOS kernel
virus and is also multipartite). A file infecting virus that *can*
infect kernel program files is *not* a kernel virus--this term is
reserved for describing viruses that utilize some special feature of
kernel files (such as their physical location on disk or a special
loading or calling convention).
B5) What is a stealth virus?
A STEALTH virus is one that, while "active", hides the modifications it
has made to files or boot records. This is usually achieved by
monitoring the system functions used to read files or sectors from
storage media and forging the results of calls to such functions. This
means programs that try to read infected files or sectors see the
original, uninfected form instead of the actual, infected form. Thus
the virus's modifications may go undetected by antivirus programs.
However, in order to do this, the virus must be resident in memory when
the antivirus program is executed and *this* may be detected by an
antivirus program.
Example: The very first DOS virus, Brain, a boot-sector infector,
monitors physical disk I/O and re-directs any attempt to read a Brain-
infected boot sector to the disk area where the original boot sector is
stored. The next viruses to use this technique were the file infectors
Number of the Beast and Frodo (aka 4096, 4K).
Countermeasures: A "clean" system is needed so that no virus is present
to distort the results of system status checks. Thus the system should
be started from a trusted, clean, bootable diskette before any virus-
checking is attempted; this is "The Golden Rule of the Trade" (see G8
for help with making a clean boot disk and booting clean).
B6) What is a polymorphic virus?
A POLYMORPHIC virus is one that produces varied but operational copies
of itself. These strategies have been employed in the hope that virus
scanners (see D1) will not be able to detect all instances of the virus.
One method of evading scan string-driven virus detectors is self-
encryption with a variable key. These viruses (e.g. Cascade) are not
termed "polymorphic", as their decryption code is always the same.
Therefore the decryptor can be used as a scan string by the simplest
scan string-driven virus scanners (unless another virus uses the
identical decryption routine *and* exact identification (see B15) is
required).
A technique for making a polymorphic virus is to choose among a variety
of different encryption schemes requiring different decryption routines:
only one of these routines would be plainly visible in any instance of
the virus (e.g. the Whale virus). A scan string-driven virus scanner
would have to exploit several scan strings (one for each possible
decryption method) to reliably identify a virus of this kind.
More sophisticated polymorphic viruses (e.g. V2P6) vary the sequences of
instructions in their variants by interspersing the decryption
instructions with "noise" instructions (e.g. a No Operation instruction
or an instruction to load a currently unused register with an arbitrary
value), by interchanging mutually independent instructions, or even by
using various instruction sequences with identical net effects (e.g.
Subtract A from A, and Move 0 to A). A simple-minded, scan string-based
virus scanner would not be able to reliably identify all variants of
this sort of virus; rather, a sophisticated "scanning engine" has to be
constructed after thorough research into the particular virus.
One of the most sophisticated forms of polymorphism used so far is the
"Mutation Engine" (MtE) which comes in the form of an object module.
With the Mutation Engine any virus can be made polymorphic by adding
certain calls to its assembler source code and linking to the mutation-
engine and random-number generator modules.
The advent of polymorphic viruses has rendered virus-scanning an ever
more difficult and expensive endeavor; adding more and more scan strings
to simple scanners will not adequately deal with these viruses.
B7) What are "fast" and "slow" infectors?
A typical file infector (such as the Jerusalem) copies itself to memory
when a program infected by it is executed, and then infects other
programs when they are executed.
A FAST infector is a virus that, when it is active in memory, infects
not only programs which are executed, but even those that are merely
opened. The result is that if such a virus is in memory, running a
scanner or integrity checker can result in all (or at least many)
programs becoming infected. Examples are the Dark Avenger and the Frodo
viruses.
The term "SLOW infector" is sometimes used to refer to a virus that only
infect files as they are modified or as they are created. The purpose
is to fool people who use integrity checkers into thinking that
modifications reported by their integrity checker are due solely to
legitimate reasons. An example is the Darth Vader virus.
B8) What is a sparse infector?
The term "sparse infector" is sometimes used to describe a virus that
infects only occasionally (e.g. every tenth program executed), or only
files whose lengths fall within a narrow range, etc. By infecting less
often, such viruses try to minimize the probability of being discovered.
B9) What is a companion virus?
A COMPANION virus is one that, instead of modifying an existing file,
creates a new program which (unknown to the user) is executed instead of
the intended program. On exit, the new program executes the original
program so that things appear normal. On PCs this has usually been
accomplished by creating an infected .COM file with the same name as an
existing .EXE file. Integrity checking antivirus software that only
looks for modifications in existing files will fail to detect such
viruses.
B10) What is an armored virus?
An ARMORED virus is one that uses special tricks to make tracing,
disassembling and understanding of its code more difficult. A good
example is the Whale virus.
B11) What is a cavity virus?
A CAVITY VIRUS is one which overwrites a part of the host file that is
filled with a constant (usually nulls), without increasing the length of
the file, but preserving its functionality. The Lehigh virus was an
early example of a cavity virus.
B12) What is a tunnelling virus?
A TUNNELLING VIRUS is one that finds the original interrupt handlers in
DOS and the BIOS and calls them directly, thus bypassing any activity
monitoring program (see D1) which may be loaded and have intercepted the
respective interrupt vectors in its attempt to detect viral activity.
Some antivirus software also uses tunnelling techniques in an attempt to
bypass any unknown or undetected virus that may be active when it runs.
B13) What is a dropper?
A DROPPER is a program that has been designed or modified to "install" a
virus onto the target system. The virus code is usually contained in a
dropper in such a way that it won't be detected by virus scanners that
normally detect that virus (i.e., the dropper program is not *infected*
with the virus). While quite uncommon, a few droppers have been
discovered. A dropper is effectively a Trojan Horse (see B3) whose
payload is installing a virus infection. A dropper which installs a
virus only in memory (without infecting anything on the disk) is
sometimes called an "injector".
B14) What is an ANSI bomb?
An "ANSI bomb" is a sequence of characters, usually embedded in a text
file, that reprograms various keyboard functions of computers with ANSI
console (screen and keyboard) drivers. In theory a special sequence of
characters could have been included in this FAQ sheet to reprogram your
Enter key to issue the command "format c:" with a return character
tacked on the end.
Such a possibility however, need not translate into much of a threat.
It is rare for modern software to require the computer it runs on to
have an ANSI console, so few PCs or other machines should load ANSI
drivers. Also, few people use software that simply "types" output to
the terminal device, so such an ANSI bomb in an e-mail or News posting
would most likely not reprogram your keyboard anyway. Further, although
FORMAT C: may be catastrophic under certain versions of DOS, it won't
hurt Macintoshes and would probably have very unexpected, or no, effects
on other systems.
If you are at all worried about the possibility of having something
untoward happen on your PC due to an ANSI bomb *and* you have to load an
ANSI driver (some communications software still requires it), look for
one of the third-party ANSI drivers which abound on BBSes and FTP sites.
Most of these have improved performance over DOS's ANSI.SYS *and* either
do not support, or let you disable, keyboard re-mapping.
B15) Miscellaneous Jargon and Abbreviations
AV = antivirus. A commonly used shorthand on Virus-L/comp.virus, as in
"av software".
BSI = Boot Sector Infector: a virus that takes control when the computer
attempts to boot. These are found in the boot sectors of floppy disks,
and the MBRs or boot sectors of hard disks (see B4 for more details).
BSIs are also known as BSVs (Boot Sector Viruses).
CMOS = Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor: A memory area that is
used in AT class, and higher, PCs for storage of system information.
CMOS is battery backed RAM (see below), originally used to maintain date
and time information while the PC was turned off. CMOS memory is not in
the normal CPU address space and cannot be executed (see E2 for further
discussion of issues concerning CMOS memory and viruses).
DBS = DOS Boot Sector: The first sector of a logical DOS partition on a
hard disk or the first absolute sector of a diskette. This sector
contains the startup code that actually loads DOS. This is often
confused with the MBR. Some boot sector viruses infect the DBS rather
than the MBR when infecting hard disks.
DETECTION = The ability of an antivirus program to detect that a virus
is present, without necessarily reporting which particular virus it is
(also see IDENTIFICATION and RECOGNITION, in this section).
DOS = Disk Operating System. We use the term "DOS" to mean any of the
MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR DOS or Novell DOS systems for PCs and compatibles,
even though there are operating systems called "DOS" on other, unrelated
machines.
GERM = The first generation of a virus. It normally cannot be produced
again during the replication process and is usually created by compiling
the source of the virus.
GOAT FILES = Programs which usually do nothing special (e.g., just exit,
or simply display a message), that are used by antivirus researchers to
capture samples of viruses. This is done to make it easier to
disassemble and understand the virus, because the infected "goat"
program is (usually) simple and does not clutter the disassembly.
Alternative terms are BAIT FILES, DECOY FILES and VICTIM FILES. In any
of these terms, the word "programs" often replaces the word "files".
IDENTIFICATION = The ability of an antivirus program (usually a scanner)
to not only detect the virus and recognize it by name, but also to
recognize it to a high degree of uniqueness. This allows third parties
to understand which particular virus it is without seeing a sample of
the virus. EXACT IDENTIFICATION occurs when every section of the non-
modifiable parts of the virus body are uniquely identified. ALMOST
EXACT IDENTIFICATION occurs if the identification is only good enough to
ensure that an attempt to remove the virus will not result in damage to
the host object by the use of an inappropriate disinfection method (also
see DETECTION and RECOGNITION, in this section).
MBR = Master Boot Record: the first absolute sector (track 0, head 0,
sector 1) on a PC hard disk, that usually contains the partition table
but on some PCs may only contain a boot sector. The MBR is also known
as the MBS (Master Boot Sector). This is *not* the same as the DOS Boot
Sector, logical sector 0 (see above).
PARTITION TABLE = A 64-byte data structure that defines the way a PC's
hard disk is divided into logical sections known as partitions. While
there is often more than one partition table on a PC's hard disk, the
most important is the one stored *in* the MBR. This one contains
important extra information such as which partition (if any) should be
booted from. The partition table is purely data, so is not executed.
Some people erroneously use the term "partition table virus" as a
synonym for "MBR virus".
RAM = Random Access Memory: the place programs are loaded into in order
to execute; the significance for viruses is that, to be active, they
must load themselves into part of the RAM. However, some virus scanners
may declare that a virus is active when it is found in RAM, even though
it may only be left in a buffer area following a disk read operation,
rather than truly being active (see C8 for further discussion of this
issue).
RECOGNITION = The ability of an antivirus program (usually a scanner) to
detect a virus and to recognize it by name (also see DETECTION and
IDENTIFICATION, in this section).
TARGETING VIRUS = A virus that tries to bypass or hinder the operation
of one or more *specific* antivirus programs. Also known as RETALIATOR,
RETRO and ANTI-ANTIVIRUS viruses.
SCAN STRING = A sequence of bytes (characters) that occur in a known
virus but not, one hopes, in legitimate programs. Some scanners allow
"wildcards"--positions that are matched by any character--in their scan
strings. Authors of virus scanners reduce the likelihood of false
positives (see B7) by carefully selecting their scan strings and often
by only searching "likely" parts of target files.
SEARCH STRING = A synonym for scan string.
SIGNATURE = A poor synonym for scan string. We recommend that you avoid
using this term and use "scan string" or "search string" instead.
TOM = Top Of Memory: the end of conventional memory--an architectural
design limit--at the 640KB mark on most PCs. Some early PCs may not
have a full 640KB, but the amount of memory is always a multiple of
64KB. A boot-record virus on a PC typically resides just below this
mark and changes the value which will be reported for the TOM to the
location of the beginning of the virus so that it won't be overwritten.
Checking this value for changes can help detect a virus, but there are
also legitimate reasons why it may change (see C10). A very few PCs
with unusual configurations or memory managers may report in excess of
640KB.
TSR = Terminate but Stay Resident: these are PC programs that stay in
memory while you continue to use the computer for other purposes; they
include pop-up utilities, network software, and the great majority of
common viruses. These can often be seen using utilities such as MEM and
MSD.
VX = Virus eXchange. A shorthand usually reserved for those BBSes and
FTP sites, and their community of users, that make their virus
collections "openly" available for downloading. Exchange of virus
samples between bona fide members of the antivirus community is not
tagged with the VX label.
================================
= Section C. Virus Detection =
================================
C1) What are the symptoms and indications of a virus infection?
Many people associate destruction--file corruption, reformatted disks
and the like--with viruses. Machines infected with viruses that do this
kind of damage often display such damages too. This is unfortunate, as
usually viruses can be detected or prevented from infecting long before
they can inflict any (serious) damage, though many viruses have no
"payload" at all. Note that viruses that simply reformat the hard disk
shortly after infecting a machine tend to wipe themselves out faster
than they spread, so don't get far.
Thus, the more successful viruses typically try to spread as much as
possible before delivering their payload, if any. As these tend to be
the viruses you are most likely to encounter, you should be aware that
there are usually symptoms of virus infection before any (or much!)
damage is done.
There are various kinds of symptoms that some virus authors have written
into their programs, such as messages, music and graphical displays.
The main indications, however, are changes in file sizes and contents,
changing of interrupt vectors, or the reassignment of other system
resources. The unaccounted use of RAM or a reduction in the amount
reported to be in the machine are important indicators. Examination of
program code is valuable to the trained eye, but even a novice can often
spot the gross differences between a valid boot sector and some viral
ones. These symptoms, along with longer disk activity and strange
behavior from the hardware, may instead be caused by genuine software,
by harmless "joke" programs, or by hardware faults.
The only foolproof way to determine that a virus is present is for an
expert to analyse the assembly code contained in all programs and system
areas, but this is usually impracticable. Virus scanners go some way
towards performing this analysis by looking in that code for known
viruses; some even use heuristic means to spot "virus-like" code, but
this is not always reliable. It is wise to arm yourself with the latest
antivirus software and to pay close attention to your system. In
particular, look for any unexpected change in the memory map or
configuration as soon as you start the computer. For users of DOS 5.0+,
the MEM program with the /C switch is very handy for this. If you have
DR DOS, use MEM with the /A switch; if you have an earlier DOS version,
use CHKDSK or the commonly-available MAPMEM utility. You don't have to
know what all the numbers mean, only that they have changed
*unexpectedly*. Mac users have "info" options, which give some
indication of memory use, but may need ResEdit to supply more detailed
information.
If you run Windows on your PC and you suddenly start getting messages at
Windows startup that 32-bit Disk Access cannot be used, this often
indicates your PC has been infected by a boot-sector virus.
C2) What steps should be taken in diagnosing and identifying viruses?
Most of the time, a virus scanner program will take care of that for
you. To help identify problems early, run a virus scanner:
1. On new programs and diskettes (write-protect diskettes before
scanning them).
2. When an integrity checker reports a mismatch.
3. When a generic monitoring program sounds an alarm.
4. When you receive an updated version of a scanner (or you have
a chance to run a different scanner than the one you have
been using).
Because of the time required, it is not generally advisable to set a
scanner to check your entire hard disk on every boot.
If you run into an alarm and your scanner doesn't identify anything or
doesn't properly clean up for you, first verify that the version you are
using is the most recent. Then get in touch with a reputable antivirus
researcher, who may ask you to send in a copy of the infected file.
(Also see C9; and F4 if you decide you need to ask for help on Virus-
L/comp.virus.)
C3) What is the best way to remove a virus?
In order that downtime be short and losses low, do the minimum that you
must to restore the system to a normal state, starting with booting the
system from a clean diskette (see G8). It is *never* necessary to low-
level format a hard disk to recover from a virus infection!
If backups of infected or damaged files are available and, in making
them, appropriate care was taken to ensure that infected files have not
been included in the backups (see D10), restoring from backup is the
safest solution, even though it can be a lot of work if many files are
involved.
More commonly, a disinfecting program is used, though disinfection is
somewhat controversial and problematic (see E8). If the virus is a boot-
sector infector, you can continue using the computer with relative
safety (if the hard disk's partition table is left intact) by booting
from a clean system diskette. However, it is wise to go through all
your diskettes removing any infections as, sooner or later, you will be
careless and leave an infected diskette in the machine when it reboots,
or give an infected diskette to a someone who doesn't have appropriate
defenses to avoid infection.
Most PC boot-sector infections can be cured by the following simple
process--pay particular care to make the checks in Steps 2 and 3.
Note that removing an MBR virus in the following way may not be
desirable, and may even cause valuable information to be lost. For
instance, the One_Half virus gradually encrypts the infected hard drive
"inwards" (starting from the "end" and moving towards the beginning),
encrypting two more tracks at each boot. The information about the size
of the encrypted area is *only* stored in the MBR. If the virus is
removed using the method above, this information will be irrecoverably
lost and part of the disk with unknown size will remain encrypted.
1. Boot the PC from a clean system floppy--this must be MS-DOS
5.0 or version 6.0 or higher of PC-DOS or DR DOS. This
diskette should carry copies of the DOS utilities MEM, FDISK,
CHKDSK, UNFORMAT and SYS. (See G8 for help on making an
emergency boot diskette.)
2. Check that your memory configuration is "normal" with MEM
(see C10 for assistance here). Check that your hard disk
partitioning is normal--run FDISK and use the "Display
partition information" option to check this. MS-DOS 5.0 (or
later) users can use UNFORMAT /L /PARTN.
3. Try doing a DIR of your hard disk/s (C:, D:, etc).
You should continue with Step 4 *only* if all the tests in
Step 2 and this step pass. Do *NOT* continue if you were
unable to correctly access *all* your hard disks, as you will
quite possibly damage critical information making permanent
data damage or loss more likely.
4. Replace the program (code) part of the MBR by using the MS-,
or PC-DOS FDISK /MBR command. If you use DR DOS 6.0, or
later, select the FDISK menu option "Re-write Master Boot
Record".
5. Replace the DOS boot sector using the command SYS C: (or
whatever is correct for your first hard disk partition). For
this step, the version of DOS on your boot diskette must be
*exactly* the same as is installed on your hard disk (this
may mean you have to first reboot with a clean boot diskette
other than that used in Step 1). If you are using a disk
compression system, such as DoubleSpace of DriveSpace, check
the documentation on how to locate the physical drive on
which the compressed volume is installed, and apply the SYS
command to that instead. Usually this is drive H: or I:.
6. Reboot from your hard disk and check that all is well--if not
(which is unlikely if you made the recommended checks), seek
expert help.
7. As you will get re-infected by forgetting an infected
diskette in your A: drive at boot time, you have to clean all
your floppies as well. This is harder, as there is no simple
way of doing this with standard DOS tools. You can copy the
files from each of your floppies, re-format them and copy the
files back, but this is a very tedious process (and prone to
destructive errors!). At this point you probably should
consider obtaining some good antivirus software.
FDISK /MBR will only overwrite the boot loader code in the MBR of the
*first* hard drive in a system. However, a few viruses will infect both
drives in a two drive system. Although the second hard drive is never
booted from in normal PC configurations, should the second drive from
such a machine ever be used as the first drive in a system, it will
still be infected and in need of disinfecting.
C4) What does the <insert name here> virus do?
If an antivirus program has detected a virus on your computer, don't
rush to post a question to this list asking what it does. First, it
might be a false positive alert (especially if the virus is found only
in one file--see C5), and second, some viruses are extremely common, so
questions like "What does the Jerusalem virus do?" or "What does the
Stoned virus do?" are asked here repeatedly. While this list is read by
several antivirus experts, they get tired of perpetually answering the
same questions over and over again. In any case, if you really need to
know what a particular virus does (as opposed to knowing enough to get
rid of it), you will need a longer treatise than could be given here.
For example, the Stoned virus replaces the disk's boot record with its
own, relocating the original to a sector on the disk that may (or may
not) occur in an unused portion of the root directory of a DOS diskette;
when active, it sits in an area a few kilobytes below the top of memory.
All this description could apply to a number of common viruses; but the
important points of where the original boot sector goes--and what effect
that has on networking software, non-DOS partitions, and so on--are all
major questions in themselves.
Therefore, it is better if you first try to answer your question
yourself. There are several sources of information about the known
computer viruses, so please consult one of them before requesting
information publicly. Chances are that your virus is rather well known
and that it is already described in detail in at least one of these
sources (see A6 for some help in finding these.)
C5) What are "false positives" and "false negatives"?
A FALSE POSITIVE (or Type-I) error is one in which antivirus software
claims that a given object is infected by a virus when, in reality, the
object is clean. This is a failure of *detection* (see B15). A FALSE
NEGATIVE (or Type-II) error is one in which the software fails to
indicate that an infected object is infected. Clearly false negatives
are more serious than false positives, although both are undesirable.
Following from some of Fred Cohen's work, it has been proven that every
virus detector must have an infinite number of false positives, false
negatives, or both. This is expressed by saying that detection of
viruses, either by appearance or behavior, is UNDECIDABLE. The
interpretation and practical significance of this depends upon the
interpretation of the terms used, and as with Fred's definition of the
term "computer virus", there is some debate over this.
In the case of virus scanners, false positives are rare, but they can
arise if the scan string chosen for a given virus is also present in
some benign objects because the string was not well chosen. In modern
scanners, most false positives probably occur because some virus
encryption engines produce very "normal looking" code and scanners that
only try to decide if a piece of code could have been generated by a
known virus encryption procedure will occasionally detect "innocent"
code as "suspicious". False negatives are more common with virus
scanners because scanners will miss completely new or heavily modified
viruses.
One other serious problem could occur: A positive that is misdiagnosed.
As an example, imagine a scanner faced with the Empire virus in a boot
record that reports it as the Stoned virus. In this case, use of a
Stoned-specific "cure" to recover from an Empire infection could result
in an unreadable disk or loss of extended partitions. Similarly,
sometimes "generic" disinfection (see D1) can result in unusable files,
unless a check is made (e.g. by comparing checksums) that the recovered
file is identical to the original file. The better generic disinfection
products all store information about the original files to allow
verification of recovery processes.
A particular type of false positive, where (part of) an *inactive* virus
is detected, is known as a GHOST POSITIVE. Ghost positives usually
occur in one of four situations (the first two of which are examples of
antivirus programs "upsetting" each other):
Ghost positives can be caused when the disinfection routine of an
antivirus program "unhooks" a virus from its target (be it a file or
boot sector) but it does so in such a way that part of the virus code is
left intact (though that code will never be executed). Another
antivirus program might see this code and report it is an infection. In
this case the second antivirus program is seeing a "ghost"--part of a
virus that was there.
A scanner may "see" the unencoded scan strings of another scanner, left
in memory after the first has run or held in memory by a resident
scanner, and report these "ghosts" as active viruses (see C6 and C8).
As explained elsewhere (see E10) a copy of an infected diskette boot
sector, sitting in the disk buffers, may be detected and reported as an
active virus.
Disinfection procedures can result in virus "remnants" being left in
"slack space" (disk space allocated to files but not actually occupied).
As in the case of copies of infected diskette boot sectors being held in
disk buffers, these remnants can be detected and incorrectly reported as
being active. Ghost positives of this nature should disappear after
running disk defragmentation or "optimization" programs with the option
to "clean" slack space. Occasionally running a defragmenter (like MS-
DOS 6's DEFRAG) after a full data backup (see D10), is a good idea
anyway--especially before installing new software. Unfortunately, DOS's
DEFRAG does not have a "clean slack space" option, though some third-
party defragmenters do. There are also utilities that clean unallocated
and slack space and these should remove ghost positives caused by
"remnants".
C6) Could an antivirus program itself be infected?
Yes, so it is important to obtain this software from good sources, and
to trust results only after running scanners from a "clean" system. But
there are situations where a scanner appears to be infected when it
isn't.
Most antivirus programs try very hard to identify viral infections only,
but sometimes they give false alarms (see C5). If two different
antivirus programs are both of the "scanner" type, they will contain
"scan strings" from which they identify viral infections. If the
strings are not "encoded", then they may be identified as a virus by
another scanner type program. Also, if the scanner does not remove the
strings from memory after it has run, then another scanner may detect a
virus string "in memory". This often causes the second scanner to
report that your system is "infected", *but* only after you have run the
first scanner (which may be a memory resident one). The major
contributors to this group are so tired of dealing with non-virus
reports of this sort that they *strongly* recommend users to avoid
antivirus software which doesn't keep its scan strings encoded in
memory.
Some "change detection" antivirus programs add a snippet of code or data
to a program in order to "protect" it. (This process is sometimes
called "inoculation", but this term is also used for other antivirus
techniques.) These file changes will likely be detected by other
"change detection" programs, and may therefore raise a warning of a
suspicious file change (see F8 for a discussion of the inadvisability of
adding self-checking code to *existing* programs).
It is good practice to use more than one antivirus program but, by their
nature, multiple antivirus programs may confuse each other!
C7) Where can I get a virus scanner for my Unix system?
Basically, you shouldn't bother scanning for Unix viruses at this point
in time. Although it is possible to write Unix-based viruses we have
yet to see any instance of a non-experimental virus in that environment.
Someone with sufficient knowledge and access to write an effective virus
would be more likely to conduct other activities than virus-writing.
Furthermore, the typical form of software sharing in the Unix
environment does not support virus spread as easily as some others.
This answer is not meant to imply that Unix viruses are impossible, or
that there aren't security problems in a typical Unix environment--there
are, and Fred Cohen's first experimental virus was implemented and
tested on a Unix system. True viruses in the Unix environment are,
however, unlikely to spread well. For more information on Unix
security, see the book "Practical Unix Security" by Garfinkel and
Spafford, O'Reilly & Associates, 1991, price $29.95 (it can be ordered
via e-mail from nu...@ora.com).
There *are* special cases in which scanning Unix systems for non-Unix
viruses does make sense. For example, a Unix system acting as a file
server (e.g., PC-NFS) for PC systems is quite capable of containing PC
file infecting viruses that are a danger to PC clients. Note that, in
this example, the Unix system would be scanned for PC viruses, not Unix
viruses. Also, *any* PC is vulnerable to PC MBR infectors, so special
care should be taken to prevent booting a PC hosted Unix OS from a
floppy infected with an MBR virus (see C12).
In addition, a file integrity checker (to detect unauthorized changes in
executable files) on Unix systems is a very good idea. (One free
program that can do this test, as well as other tests, is Tripwire,
available by anonymous FTP from its "home" site of coast.cs.purdue.edu
in /pub/COAST/Tripwire, and from several other antivirus sites.)
Unauthorized file changes on Unix systems are very common, although they
are not usually due to virus activity.
C8) Why does my scanner report an infection only sometimes?
There are circumstances where part of a virus exists in RAM without
being active. If your scanner occasionally reports a virus in memory,
it could be due to the operating system buffering diskette reads or
harmlessly keeping disk contents that include a virus in memory, or
after running another scanner, there may be scan strings left (again
harmlessly) in memory. These are known as GHOST POSITIVE alerts (see C5
for more details).
C9) I think I have detected a new virus; what do I do?
Whenever there is doubt over a virus, you should obtain the latest
versions of several (not just one) major virus scanners. Some scanning
programs now use "heuristic" methods (F-PROT and TBSCAN are examples),
and "activity monitoring" programs can report a program as being
possibly infected when it is in fact perfectly safe (odd, perhaps, but
not infected). If no scanner finds a virus, but a heuristic program
raises some alarms (or there are other reasons to suspect a virus--e.g.
change in size of files, change in memory allocation) then it is
possible that you have found a new virus, although the chances are
probably greater that it is an "odd but okay" disk or file. Start by
looking in recent Virus-L/comp.virus postings for "known" false
positives, then contact the author of the antivirus software that
reports the virus-like features; the documentation for the software may
have a section explaining what to do if you think you have found a new
virus.
C10) CHKDSK reports 639K (or less) total memory on my DOS system; am I
infected?
If CHKDSK displays 639KB (654,336 bytes) for the total memory instead of
640K (655,360 bytes)--so that you are missing only 1KB-- it is possibly
due to reasons other than a virus, but there are a few common viruses
that take only 1KB from total memory (Monkey and AntiEXE). Non-virus
reasons for a deficiency of 1KB include:
1. A PS/2 computer. IBM PS/2 computers reserve 1KB of
conventional RAM for an Extended BIOS Data Area, i.e. for
additional data storage required by its BIOS.
2. A computer with a BIOS, which is set to use the upper 1KB of
memory for its internal variables. (Most BIOSes with this
option can be instructed to use lower memory instead.)
3. Some SCSI controllers.
4. The DiskSecure antivirus program.
5. Mouse buffers for older Compaqs.
If you are missing 2KB or more from the 640KB, 512KB, or whatever the
conventional memory normally is for your PC, the chances are greater
that you have a boot-record virus (e.g. Stoned, Form or Michelangelo),
although, even in this case there may be legitimate reasons for the
missing memory:
1. Many access control programs for preventing booting from a
floppy.
2. H/P Vectra computers.
3. Some special BIOS'es which use memory for a built-in calendar
and/or calculator.
However, these are only rough guides. In order to be more certain
whether the missing memory is due to a virus, you should:
1. run several virus detectors;
2. look for a change in total memory every now and then;
3. compare the total memory size with that obtained when cold
booting from a "clean" system diskette. The latter should
show the normal amount of total memory for your configuration
(although several BIOSes now steal 1KB of conventional memory
when booted from floppy but none when booting from a hard
drive).
Note: In all cases, CHKDSK should be run without software such as MS-
Windows or DesqView loaded, since these operating environments seem to
be able to open DOS boxes only on 1KB boundaries (some seem to be even
coarser); thus CHKDSK run from a DOS box may report unrepresentative
values.
Note also that some machines have only 512KB or 256KB instead of 640KB
of conventional memory.
C11) I have an infinite loop of sub-directories on my hard drive; am I
infected?
Probably not. This happens now and then, when something sets the
"cluster number" field of a subdirectory to the same cluster as an upper-
level (usually the root) directory. On PCs the /F parameter of CHKDSK
should be able to "fix" this (as should many other popular disk-repair
programs), usually by removing the offending directory. *Don't* erase
any of the "replicated" files in the "odd" directory, since that will
erase the "copy" in the root as well (these are not really copies at
all; just a second pointers to the same files).
C12) Can a PC not running DOS be infected with a common DOS virus?
Yes! There are three distinct possibilities here.
One is Novell's NetWare (and possibly other network operating systems),
which boots from a DOS disk and loads a "standard" DOS executable that
takes complete control of the system from DOS. This executable--
SERVER.EXE--could easily be infected by a DOS file infector. For
example, a server's NetWare boot diskette may have to be taken from the
server to a DOS PC to edit some of the configuration and startup files
that have to be on that diskette. If the PC where the editing is done
is infected with a file infecting virus, SERVER.EXE may well be infected
when the new startup files are saved to the diskette. Such infections
are virtually guaranteed to render SERVER.EXE inoperative and the server
would fail at its next restart. No viruses are known to target the
NetWare kernel specifically.
Another possibility is the case of a 386 (or better) system running
NetWare or a self-loading OS, such as Unix, NeXTStep486, Windows NT or
OS/2, since this system is still vulnerable to infection by MBR
infectors (such as Stoned or Michelangelo), as these are operating
system independent. Note that an infection on such a system may result
in the disabling of non-DOS disk partitions (possibly beyond easy
recovery) because the tricks and system conventions these viruses employ
may not apply to operating systems other than DOS. The issue here is
that MBR infectors are not really "DOS viruses" so much as "PC-BIOS
viruses"--they can infect any machine with a PC-compatible BIOS.
Third, *any* OS that offers a "DOS box" or "DOS emulator" to run DOS
programs can, potentially, run a virus-infected DOS program. Such
activation of a virus should allow the virus to spread to any "targets"
available to it under that DOS emulator. For example, a DOS program
infected with a multipartite virus, when run under OS/2 would probably
be able to infect other DOS executables, but not the MBR/DBS, as OS/2
only allows programs to read these critical areas of the hard drive (see
E12 for more details on DOS viruses running under OS/2). With the
increasing sophistication and power of computing environments, DOS
emulators running on non-PC computers are increasingly available and
able to run DOS viruses.
C13) My hard-disk's file system has been garbled: Do I have a virus?
Many things apart from viruses cause corruption of file systems.
With DOS machines possibly the most common is Microsoft's SmartDrive
disk cache program that came with Microsoft Windows 3.1 and subsequent
versions of MS-DOS. Most versions of this software not only cache disk-
reads but, by default, also cache disk-writes. This means that recently
"written" files (say from saving a document in your word processor) may
not have all the information about the associated file system updates
written to disk by the time you exit the application, close Windows and
turn off your PC. Users who simply save work then turn their PC off are
even more likely to suffer from disk caching induced problems like this.
Regardless of what caused your file-system corruption, you should
probably seek expert help *before* trying to fix anything yourself.
While there are many powerful and interesting-sounding utilities of the
"disk fix" kind available, *all* of these have the stunning ability to
render your file system all but unfixable (or at least, fixable to a
much lesser degree) when presented with unusual situations their authors
hadn't considered when designing the programs. Unfortunately, as these
programs (by definition) do not recognize these situations, they
confidently pronounce that you have such-and-such a problem then ask
your permission to fix it. Even when these utilities have "undo"
options, they often cannot restore your file system to its originally
"broken" state to give human experts their best shot at fixing it.
Thus, detecting whether it is safe to let one of these programs loose on
your disks is something you should normally seek expert help in
deciding.
=================================
= Section D. Protection plans =
=================================
D1) What is the best antivirus program?
None! Different products are more or less appropriate in different
situations, but in general you should build a cost-effective *strategy*
based on multiple layers of defense. There are three main kinds of
antivirus software, plus several other means of protection, such as
hardware write-protect methods (see D4). When planning your antivirus
strategy you should also look closely at your backup policies and
procedures (see 10).
1. ACTIVITY MONITORING programs. These try to prevent infection
before it happens by looking for virus-like activity, such as
attempts to write to another executable, reformat the disk,
etc. An alternative term is BEHAVIOR BLOCKER.
Examples: SECURE and FluShot+ (PC), and GateKeeper
(Macintosh).
These programs are considered the weakest line of defense
against viruses on a system that does not have memory
protection, because in such an environment it is possible for
a tunnelling virus (see B12) to bypass or disable them.
2. SCANNERS. Most look for known viruses by searching your
disks and files for "scan strings" or patterns, but a few use
heuristic techniques to recognize viral code. Most now also
include some form of "algorithmic scanning" in order to
detect known polymorphic viruses. A scanner may be designed
to examine specified disks or files on demand, or it may be
resident, examining each program which is about to be
executed. Most scanners also include virus removers.
Examples: FindViru in Dr Solomon's AntiVirus ToolKit, Frisk
Software's F-PROT, McAfee's VirusScan (all PC), Disinfectant
(Macintosh).
Resident scanners: McAfee's V-Shield, and F-PROT's VIRSTOP.
Heuristic scanners: the Analyse option in F-PROT, TBAV's
TbScan and ChkBoot (from Padgett Peterson's FixUtils).
Scanners are the most convenient and the most widely used
kind of antivirus programs. They are a relatively weak line
of defense because even the simplest virus can bypass them if
it is new and unknown to the scanner. Therefore, your virus
protection system should not rely on a scanner alone.
3. INTEGRITY CHECKERS or MODIFICATION DETECTORS. These compute
a small "checksum" or "hash value" (usually CRC or
cryptographic) for files when they are presumably uninfected,
and later compare newly calculated values with the original
ones to see if the files have been modified. This catches
unknown viruses as well as known ones and thus provides
*generic* detection. On the other hand, modifications can
also be due to reasons other than viruses. Usually, it is up
to the user to decide which modifications are intentional and
which might be due to viruses, although a few products give
the user help in making this decision. As in the case of
scanners, integrity checkers may be called to checksum entire
disks or specified files on demand, or they may be resident,
checking each program which is about to be executed (the
latter is sometimes called an INTEGRITY SHELL). A third
implementation is as a SELF-TEST, where the checksumming code
is attached to each executable file so they check themselves
just before execution. It is generally considered a bad idea
to add such code to existing executables (see F8).
Examples: ASP Integrity Toolkit (commercial), and Integrity
Master and VDS (shareware), all for the PC.
Integrity checkers are considered to be the strongest line of
defense against computer viruses, because they are not virus-
specific and can detect new viruses without being constantly
updated. However, they should not be considered as an
absolute protection--they have several drawbacks, cannot
identify the particular virus that has attacked the system,
and there are successful methods of attack against them too.
3a. Some modification detectors provide HEURISTIC DISINFECTION.
Sufficient information is saved for each file so that it can
be restored to its original state in the case of the great
majority of viral infections, even if the virus is unknown.
Examples: V-Analyst 3 (BRM Technologies, Israel), the VGUARD
module of V-Care and ThunderByte's TbClean.
Note that behavior blockers and scanners are virus *prevention* tools,
while integrity checkers are virus *detection* tools.
Of course, only a few examples of each type have been given. All of
these types of antivirus program have a place in protecting against
computer viruses, but you should appreciate the limitations of each
method, along with system-supplied security measures that may or may not
be helpful in defeating viruses. Ideally, you should arrange a
combination of methods that cover each others' weaknesses.
A typical PC installation might include a protection system on the hard
disk's MBR to protect against viruses at load time (ideally this would
be hardware or in BIOS, but software methods such as DiskSecure and
Henrik Stroem's HS are pretty good). This would be followed by resident
virus detectors loaded as part of the machine's startup (CONFIG.SYS or
AUTOEXEC.BAT), such as FluShot+ and/or VirStop and/or ChkBoot. A
scanner such as F-PROT or McAfee's VirusScan and an integrity checker,
such as Integrity Master, could be put into AUTOEXEC.BAT, but this may
be a problem if you have a large disk to check, or don't reboot often
enough. Most importantly, new files and diskettes should be scanned as
they arrive *regardless* of their source. If your system has DR DOS
installed, you should use the PASSWORD command to write-protect all
system executables and utilities. If you have Stacker or SuperStor, you
can get some improved security from these compressed drives, but also a
risk that those viruses stupid enough to directly write to the disk
could do much more damage than normal. In this case a software write-
protect system (such as provided with Disk Manager or The Norton
Utilities) may help. Possibly the best solution is to put all
executables on a disk of their own, with a hardware write-protect system
that sounds an alarm if a write is attempted.
If you do use a resident BSI detector or a scan-while-you-copy detector,
it is important to trace back any infected diskette to its source. The
reason viruses survive so well is that usually you cannot do this,
because the infection is found long after the infecting diskette has
been forgotten due to most people's lax scanning policies.
Organizations should devise and implement a careful policy that may
include a system of vetting new software brought into the building and
free virus detectors for home machines of employees/students/etc who
take work home with them.
Other antivirus techniques include:
1. Creation of a special MBR to make the hard disk inaccessible
when booting from a diskette (the latter is useful since
booting from a diskette will normally bypass any protection
measures loaded in the CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT files
on the hard disk).
Some of these systems won't prevent attack by some MBR virus
infections if booting from an infected floppy. This approach
is less important now, as most newer PCs allow you to change
the boot order so the first hard drive is tried *before* any
of the floppy drives.
2. Use of Artificial Intelligence to learn about new viruses and
extract scan patterns for them.
Examples: V-Care (CSA Interprint, Israel; distributed in the
US by Sela Consultants Corp.), Victor Charlie (Bangkok
Security Associates, Thailand; distributed in the US by
Computer Security Associates).
3. Encryption of files (with decryption before execution).
4. Diskette "fences". There are three different approaches to
this. One prevents executables from being accessed from
floppy drives while another prohibits the use of unscanned
(possibly "unclean") files or diskettes. A third method uses
a non-standard diskette format so diskettes can only be used
on (and therefore shared among) machines using the
appropriate antivirus software (usually all those within a
site or company). This last method is probably the most
common diskette fence and provides better protection against
boot sector viruses than the other "fence" types.
The workings of the first and third are probably fairly clear
from these brief descriptions. The second approach works by
writing special information to normally unused areas of the
diskette as part of the scanning process and employing a
driver in the users' machines prevents access to files that
aren't marked as scanned (or to any part of a diskette that
contains unscanned files). Alternatives include encrypting
scanned files and drivers that only allow access to encrypted
files, and so on. One advantage of this second type of
system is that you only need scanners for "perimeter
checking" machines, reducing the overhead and cost of keeping
your scanners up to date.
Examples: D-Fence, Virus Fence, TbFence, DiskNet.
D2) Is it possible to protect a computer system with only software?
Not perfectly; although software defenses can significantly reduce your
risk of being affected by viruses *when applied appropriately*. All
virus defense systems are tools--each with its own capabilities and
shortcomings. Learn how your system works and be sure to work within
its limitations.
Using a layered approach, a very high level of protection/detection can
be achieved with software only.
1. ROM BIOS--password (access control) and selecting to boot
from the hard drive rather than from diskette. (Some may
consider this hardware.)
2. Boot sectors--integrity management and change detection.
3. OS programs--integrity management of existing programs,
scanning of unknown programs. Requirement of authentication
values for any new or transmitted software.
4. Locks that prevent writing to a fixed or floppy disk.
As each layer is added, undetected invasion becomes more difficult.
Nevertheless, complete protection against any possible attack cannot be
provided without dedicating the computer to pre-existing or unique
tasks. International standardization on the IBM PC architecture is both
its greatest asset and its greatest vulnerability.
D3) Is it possible to write-protect the hard disk with software only?
The answer is no. There are several programs that claim to do this, but
*all* of them can be bypassed with techniques already used by some
viruses. Therefore you should never rely on such programs *alone*,
although they can be useful in combination with other antivirus
measures.
D4) What can be done with hardware protection?
Hardware protection can accomplish various things, including: write
protection for hard disk drives, memory protection, monitoring and
trapping unauthorized system calls, etc. Again, no single tool will be
foolproof and the "stronger" hardware-based protection is, the more
likely it will interfere with the "normal" operation of your computer.
The popular idea of write-protection (see D3) may stop viruses
*spreading* to the disk that is protected, but doesn't, in itself,
prevent a virus from *running*.
Also, some existing hardware protection schemes can be easily bypassed,
fooled, or disconnected, if the virus writer knows them well and designs
a virus that is aware of the particular defense.
The big problem with hardware protection is that there are few (if any)
operations that a general-purpose computer can perform that are used by
viruses *only*. Therefore, making a hardware protection system for such
a computer typically involves deciding on some (small) set of operations
that are "valid but not normally performed except by viruses", and
designing the system to prevent these operations. Unfortunately, this
means either designing limitations into the level of protection the
hardware system provides or adding limitations to the computer's
functionality by installing the hardware protection system. Much can be
achieved, however, by making the hardware "smarter". This is double-
edged: while it provides more security, it usually means adding a
program in an EPROM to control it. This allows a virus to locate the
program and to call it directly after the point that allows access. It
is still possible to implement this correctly though--if this program is
not in the address space of the main CPU, has its own CPU and is
connected directly to the hard disk and the keyboard. As an example,
there is a PC-based product called ExVira which does this and seems
fairly secure, but it is a whole computer on an add-on board and is
quite expensive.
D5) Does setting a file's attributes to READ ONLY protect it from
viruses?
Generally, no. While the Read Only attribute will protect your files
from a few viruses, most simply override it, and infect normally. So,
while setting executable files to Read Only a good idea (it protects
against accidental deletion), it is certainly not a thorough protection
against viruses!
In some environments the Read Only attribute does provide some
additional protection. For instance, under Novell Netware a user can be
denied the right to modify file attributes in directories on the server.
This means that a virus that infects such a user's machine will be
unable to infect files in those server directories if the files have
their Read Only attribute set.
D6) Do password/access control systems protect my files from viruses?
All password and other access control systems are designed to protect
the user's data from other users and/or their programs. Remember,
however, that when you execute an infected program the virus in it will
gain your current rights/privileges. Therefore, if the access control
system provides *you* the right to modify some files, it will provide it
to the virus too. Note that this does not depend on the operating
system used--DOS, Unix, or whatever. Therefore, an access control
system will protect your files from viruses no better than it protects
them from you.
Under DOS, there is no memory protection, so a virus could disable the
access control system in memory, or even patch the operating system
itself. On more advanced operating systems (Unix, OS/2, Windows NT)
this is much harder or impossible, so there is much less risk that such
protection measures could be disabled by a virus. Even so, viruses will
still be able to spread, for the reasons noted above. In general,
access control systems (if implemented correctly) are only able to slow
down virus spread, not to eliminate viruses entirely.
Of course, it's better to have access control than not to have it at
all. Just be sure to not develop a false sense of security or come to
rely *entirely* on your access control system to protect you.
D7) Do the protection systems in DR DOS work against viruses?
Partially. Neither the password file/directory protection available
from DR DOS version 5 onwards, nor the secure disk partitions from DR
DOS 6 were intended to combat viruses, but they do so to some extent.
If you have DR DOS, it is very wise to password-protect your files (to
stop accidental damage too), but don't depend on it as your only means
of defense.
The use of the password command (e.g. PASSWORD/W:MINE *.EXE *.COM) will
stop more viruses than the plain DOS attribute facility (see D5), but
that isn't saying much! The combination of the password system plus a
disk compression system may be more secure, because to bypass the
password system a virus must access the disk directly, but under
SuperStor or Stacker the physical disk will be meaningless to a virus.
There may be some viruses that, rather than invisibly infecting files on
compressed disks, very visibly corrupt such disks.
The main use of the "secure disk partitions" system, introduced in
DR DOS 6, is to stop people from fiddling with your hard disk while you
are away from the PC. The way this is implemented, however, may also
help against a few viruses that look for DOS partitions on a disk.
Furthermore, DR DOS is not fully compatible with MS/PC-DOS, especially
when you get down to the low-level tricks that some viruses use. For
instance, some internal memory structures are "read-only" in the sense
that they are constantly updated (for MS/PC-DOS compatibility) but not
really used by DR DOS, so even if a sophisticated virus modifies them,
it will not have any effect, or at least not that intended by the
virus's author.
In general, using a less compatible system diminishes the number of
existing viruses that can infect it. For instance, the introduction of
hard disks made the Brain virus almost disappear; the introduction of
the 80286 and DOS 4.0+ made the Yale and Ping Pong viruses next to
extinct, and so on.
D8) Does a write-protect tab on a floppy disk stop viruses?
In general, yes. The write-protection on IBM PC (and compatible) and
Macintosh floppy disk drives is implemented in hardware, not software,
so viruses cannot infect a diskette when the write-protection mechanism
is functioning properly (though many "friend of a friend" stories abound
contesting this).
But remember:
1. A computer may have a faulty write-protect system (this
happens!)--you can test it by trying to copy a file to a
diskette that is apparently write-protected.
2. Someone may have removed the tab for a while, allowing a
virus on.
3. The files may have been infected before the disk was
protected. Even some diskettes "straight from the factory"
have been known to be infected during the production process.
Thus, you should scan even new, write-protected disks for viruses. You
should also scan new, pre-formatted diskettes, as there have been cases
of infected, shrink-wrapped new diskettes.
D9) Do local area networks (LANs) help to stop viruses or do they
facilitate their spread?
Both. A set of computers connected in a well managed LAN, with
carefully established security settings, with minimal privileges for
each user, and without a transitive path of information flow between the
users (i.e., the objects writable by any of the users are not readable
by any of the others) is more virus-resistant than the same set of
computers if they are not interconnected. The reason is that when all
computers have (read-only) access to a common pool of executable
programs, there is usually less need for diskette swapping and software
exchange between them, and therefore less chances for a virus to spread.
However, if the LAN has lax security and is not well managed, it could
help a virus to spread like wildfire. It might even be impossible to
remove the infection without shutting down the entire LAN. Stories of
LAN login programs, shared copies of which are run on every workstation,
becoming infected are, unfortunately, not uncommon.
A network that supports login scripting is inherently more resistant to
viruses than one that does not *if* this is used to validate the client
before allowing access to the network.
D10) What is the proper way to make backups?
A good backup regime is at the heart of any comprehensive virus defense
scheme. No matter what combination of software and hardware defenses
you install, nor what "policy" you implement, there is always the
possibility that some new virus will be devised that can beat your
defenses *or* that someone will fail to follow "proper protocol" with
"foreign" media or file sources. In corporate settings, the possibility
of the latter as a form of directed attack by disgruntled employees
cannot be overlooked.
Planning to minimize the impact of a virus infection on your computing
is much like planning to minimize the effect of an earthquake or fire.
You cannot be sure where, when or even *if* you will ever be "hit"; the
potential impact could fall anywhere in a very wide range of possible
damage; being "completely safe" can involve enormous expense; and you
cannot adequately test your preparations without exposing yourself to
serious risk of damage. Therefore, finalizing on the defense scheme
that suits you involves deciding on the level of loss you can afford to
stand and probably settling on a system that, while not "perfectly
watertight," is "good enough".
Despite the importance of a good backup scheme, it is really beyond the
scope of this FAQ sheet to provide a definitive guide to planning your
backup procedure--that could easily take another document the size of
this! All this said however, we provide the following advice as, we
hope, a good starting point.
Planning an effective backup scheme really starts with answering some
important questions. Consider:
1. Who is dependent on the files on this system? Is it a home
computer mostly used by the kids for games, a standalone
workstation running a small business, a networked workstation
in a medium-sized company or the same in a large corporate
environment, or a server with many (hundreds) of users?
2. How long can the most important user be without access to
these files? One hour, 2, 4, 8, a day, a week? Remember to
assume that your problems will arise at the worst possible
moment (like 24 hours before a tax audit is due to start!).
3. What proportion (and volume!) of files are "fixed" (in the
sense that they seldom change) versus those that change? Do
all changes have to be backed-up, or is a "once-some-given-
time-period" backup acceptable?
4. What type of information is in the regularly changing files?
The answers to these (and other) questions help shape backup and
recovery plans and are fairly well understood issues amongst computer
systems professionals. Highly critical systems containing crucial data
will be designed from the outset to have high redundancy (disk
mirroring, disk arrays, UPSes, maybe even redundant servers), though
such system options *alone* provide no real protection from virus
attacks. You may opt for a backup system that records every change to
any files on your system (server-only or clients and servers) or regular
(often nightly) backup of changed data files, and so on.
When it comes to planning backup regimes with an eye to the possibility
of recovering from a virus attack, you also have to consider that
regularly backing-up executables (loosely, "programs") can cause
problems. If you do and are infected by a virus, unless you can be
*absolutely sure* of the date of first infection (despite sounding
simple, this is not something that can commonly be done!), you may have
quite a few problems finding the best backup set to restore from, as you
will probably have several sets including infected executables.
For home or small business use, it may be best to maintain two kinds of
backups. One would contain only your data files and one your operating
system and program files (issues to consider are covered in the next two
paragraphs). This may be facilitated by maintaining a strict separation
of the two kinds of files, perhaps by putting the operating system and
programs on one drive or partition and your data files on another.
While this is probably not practical for many existing machines,
enforcing adherence to the "rule" that data files should only be placed
in appropriate sub-directories (folders) within a prescribed data
directory may not be a bad thing.
The best way to manage backup of data files depends on the answers to
too many of the questions listed above for us to give definitive advice
here. While planning your backup regime, bear in mind that some viruses
damage some kinds of data files, while others make small, occasional,
random modifications as files are written to disk. While viruses with
either of these "features" are quite rare, both of these possibilities
mean that vital data files should probably be backed-up to long-cycle
media sets as well as to shorter cycle sets and other steps taken to
ensure you can recreate the sequence of changes. (For example, retain
all transaction records so they can be re-entered.)
You should probably backup executables once after installing them and
only *after* you are sure they are virus-free according to your current
antivirus screening procedures. *Never* make a backup containing
executables over media that hold *any* of your current backups. The
more cautious of us maintain several cycles of executable backups.
These precautions should ensure you don't face the problem outlined
several paragraphs ago, and mean that should a newly installed program
be infected with a virus your current defenses don't detect, you can
easily restore your system and installed software to how it was before
the infected software was installed, when you do become aware of its
presence. You will probably have to manually reinstall any programs you
installed subsequent to installing the infected program.
Having referred to this second kind of backup as "executables only", we
should point out that a complete system backup is also acceptable for
this type of backup. However, note that a sequence of full system
backups with interim "incremental" backups (when only those files that
have changed since the last complete backup are saved) is *not* what we
are advocating. Such systems tend to be too "broad brush" to be truly
useful for recovering from an unknown, future virus attack.
Unfortunately, this tends to be the preferred/recommended backup scheme
for small-to-medium sized systems (including most personal computers),
and is typically what most popular backup software for such systems is
designed to do. This doesn't mean that popular backup systems and
software aren't useful, just that you have to exercise some care in
using them (like excluding executable files from your incremental
backups).
Having said all this, there are still a few other problems to consider,
especially: Which files should you count as "data" files? This can be
problematic as most people immediately think of their word-processor and
spreadsheet files, and the like, as data, and that's about it. What
about the files in which your programs store their configuration
information? In a sense, these are as much "your data" as they are
program files, because they reflect your preferred screen colors and
layouts, default fonts, personalized button bars and so on. When you
look at the time people spend finding the (often obscure) options
settings in their programs and making them work "just right", and how
upset they can be if they lose these settings, it makes sense to treat
such configuration files as you treat other "personal data files" in
your backup regimes. Similarly, people tend to treat system
configuration files (in DOS/Windows PCs CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT,
WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI at a minimum!) as part of the system, often ignoring
the (sometimes considerable) fine-tuning these configuration files go
through *between* system and executable backups.
One last point--it cannot be stressed enough that you *MUST* have a
full, working copy of the software you need to restore your backups in a
safe place. You must be able to guarantee that this software is not
virus infected should you ever have to use it, *AND* that it is fully
usable should you be facing a machine that has had its entire hard drive
"wiped clean".
======================================================
= Section E. Facts and Fibs About Computer Viruses =
======================================================
E1) Can boot sector viruses infect non-bootable DOS floppy disks?
Any DOS diskette that has been properly formatted contains some
executable code in its boot sector. (There is some debate as to whether
this code should be called a program or not. The important thing here
is that this code is *executed* at system startup if the diskette is in
the system's boot drive.) If a diskette is not "bootable", all that
boot sector (normally) does is print a message (on a PC, typically
something like "Non-system disk or disk error; replace and strike any
key when ready"). However, the boot sector is still executable and
therefore vulnerable to infection. Should you accidentally boot your
machine with a "non-bootable" diskette in the boot drive, and see that
message, it means that any boot virus that may have been on that
diskette *has* run, and had the chance to infect your hard drive, or
whatever. So, when talking about viruses, the words "bootable" and "non-
bootable" are misleading. All formatted diskettes are capable of
carrying boot sector viruses.
Most current computers will try to boot from their (first) floppy drive
before trying to load an operating system off their hard disks. Because
of this and the fact that every floppy disk is possibly infected with a
boot sector virus, it is a *very* good idea to set your computer to try
to boot from its hard disk. Many newer PCs offer the option to select
boot order in their system CMOS setup routines. If your computer has
such an option, set it to try to boot from your hard disk first.
E2) Can a virus hide in a PC's CMOS memory?
No. The CMOS RAM in which PC system information is stored and backed up
by batteries is accessible through the I/O ports and not directly
addressable. That is, in order to read its contents you have to use I/O
instructions rather than standard memory addressing techniques.
Therefore, anything stored in CMOS is not directly "in memory". Nothing
in a normal machine loads the data from CMOS and executes it, so a virus
that "hid" in CMOS RAM would still have to infect an executable object
of some kind in order to load and execute whatever had been written to
CMOS. A malicious virus can of course *alter* values in the CMOS as
part of its payload, but it can't spread through, or hide itself in, the
CMOS.
Further, most PCs have only 64 bytes of CMOS RAM and the use of the
first 48 bytes of this is predetermined by the IBM AT specification.
Several BIOS'es also use many of the "extra" bytes of CMOS to hold their
own, machine-specific settings. This means that anything that a virus
stores in CMOS can't be very large. A virus could use some of the
"surplus" CMOS RAM to hide a small part of its body (e.g. its payload,
counters, etc). Any executable code stored there, however, must first
be extracted to ordinary memory in order to be executed.
This issue should not be confused with whether a virus can *modify* the
contents of a PC's CMOS RAM. Of course viruses can, as this memory is
not specially protected (on normal PCs), so any program that knows how
to change CMOS contents can do so. Some viruses do fiddle with the
contents of CMOS RAM (mostly with ill-intent) and these have often been
incorrectly reported as "infecting CMOS" or "hiding in CMOS". An
example is the PC boot sector virus EXE_Bug, which changes CMOS settings
to indicate that no floppy drives are present (see G8 for more details).
E3) Can a PC virus hide in Extended or in Expanded RAM in a PC?
Yes. If one does though, it has to have a small part resident in
conventional RAM; it cannot reside *entirely* in Extended or in Expanded
RAM. Currently there are no known XMS viruses and only a few EMS
viruses (Emma is an example).
E4) Can a virus hide in a PC's Upper Memory or in High Memory Area?
Yes, it is possible to construct a virus which will locate itself in
Upper Memory Blocks (UMBs--640K to 1024K) or in the High Memory Area
(HMA--1024K to 1088K). Some viruses (e.g. EDV) do hide in UMBs and at
least one, Goldbug, will use the HMA if it is available.
It might be thought that there is no point in scanning in these areas
for any viruses other than those that are specifically known to inhabit
them. However, there are cases when even ordinary viruses can be found
in Upper Memory. Suppose that a conventional memory-resident virus
infects a TSR program and this program is loaded high by the user (for
instance, from AUTOEXEC.BAT). Then the virus code will also reside in
Upper Memory. Therefore, an effective scanner must be able to scan this
part of memory for viruses too.
E5) Can a virus infect data files?
Some viruses (e.g., Frodo, Cinderella) modify non-executable files.
However, in order to spread, the virus code must be executed. Therefore
"infected" non-executable files cannot be sources of further infection.
Such "infections" are usually mistakes, due to bugs in the virus.
Even so, note that it is not always possible to make a sharp distinction
between executable and non-executable files. One person's data can be
another's code and vice versa. Some files that are not directly
executable contain code or data which can, under some conditions, be
executed or interpreted.
Some examples from the PC world are OBJ files, libraries, device
drivers, source files for any compiler or interpreter (including DOS BAT
files and OS/2 CMD files), macro files for some packages like Microsoft
Word and Lotus 1-2-3, and many others. Currently there are viruses that
infect boot sectors, master boot records, COM files, EXE files, BAT
files, OBJ files, device drivers, Microsoft Word document and template
files, and C source code files, although any of the objects mentioned
above theoretically can be used as an infection carrier. PostScript
files can also be used to carry a virus, although no currently known
virus does this.
Aside from the above, however, there is an increasing possibility of
viruses spreading through the sharing of data files. More and more we
see the ease with which software producers give their programs the
ability to embed "objects" of many kinds into document files, and into
fields in databases and spreadsheets. Perhaps the best-known of these
systems are Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) in MS Windows and the
OpenDoc format. As these embedded objects often have the ability to
"display" themselves we see that many files traditionally thought of as
data-only, will increasingly be containers carrying data and executable
code. We are not aware of any virus that specifically targets such
executable "objects", but it is now a trivial task to embed executable
files into some kinds of document files so they will be run when the
icon representing them is clicked in the finished document. There is
nothing to prevent infected executables being embedded in this way, and
thus for viruses to be spread through the distribution of "data files".
E6) Can viruses spread from one type of computer to another?
The simple answer is that no currently known viruses can do this.
Although some disk formats may be the same (e.g. Atari ST and DOS), the
different machines interpret the code differently. For example, the
Stoned virus cannot infect an Atari ST as the ST cannot execute the
virus code in the boot sector. The Stoned virus contains instructions
for the 80x86 family of CPUs that the 680x0 CPU family (used in the
Atari ST) can't understand or execute.
The more general answer is that such viruses are possible, but unlikely.
Such a virus would be quite a bit larger than current viruses and might
well be easier to find. Additionally, the low incidence of cross-
platform sharing of software means that any such virus would be unlikely
to spread--it would be a poor environment for virus growth.
A related, but different, issue is that of viruses running under
operating system emulators on machines other than those for which the
operating system was originally designed. This is covered in some
detail elsewhere in the FAQ sheet (see C12).
E7) Are mainframe computers susceptible to computer viruses?
Yes. Numerous experiments have shown that computer viruses spread very
quickly and effectively on mainframe systems. To our knowledge,
however, no non-research computer virus has been seen on mainframe
systems. (Despite often being described as such, the widely reported
Internet Worm of November 1988 was not a computer virus by most
definitions, although it had some virus-like characteristics.)
Many people think that computer viruses are impossible on mainframe
computers, because their operating systems provide means of protection
(e.g., memory protection, access control, etc.) that cannot by bypassed
by a program, unlike the operating systems of most personal computers.
Unfortunately, this belief is false. As demonstrated by Fred Cohen in
1984, access controls are unable to prevent computer viruses--they can
only slow down the speed with which viruses spread. If there is a
transitive path of information flow from one account to another on a
mainframe computer, then a virus can spread from one account to the
other, without having to bypass any protections.
Consider the following example. The attacker (A) has an account on a
machine and wants to attack it with a virus. In order to do this, A
writes a virus and releases it. Due to the protection provided by the
operating system, the virus can only infect the files writable by A. On
a typical system, those would be only the files owned by A.
However, A is not alone on the system. A works with B on some joint
projects. At some time, B might want to check how far A has progressed
in her/his part of the project. This might involve running one of the
programs that A has written--programs that are now all infected with A's
virus.
On a sytem with protection based on discretionary access controls (e.g.,
Unix, VMS, and most other popular OSes), the program that is being
executed usually runs with the privileges of the user who is executing
it--not with those of the program's owner. (In the few instances where
this is not the case, it presents a different kind of security threat,
unrelated to viruses.) That is, when B runs A's infected program, the
virus in it will run with B's privileges and will be able to infect all
programs writable by B.
At some later time, A and B's boss, C, might want to check whether they
have completed that joint project. Even if the boss has reasons to
suspect A (e.g., as a disgruntled employee), s/he is likely to trust B
and execute one of her/his programs. This results in the virus running
with C's privileges (which are likely to be significantly greater than
those of A and B) and infecting all programs writable by C. Quite
possibly, these programs will include many owned by other employees,
thus creating many more distribution chains that nobody suspects.
The virus may interfere somehow with C's normal work, which causes C
(who is probably not very knowledgeable about such things as computer
security and viruses) to ask the system administrator, D, for help. If
D executes one of C's infected programs (and s/he is much more likely to
trust a respectable person like C--who is quite probably D's boss as
well--than any of C's employees), this will cause the virus that A wrote
a long time ago to run with system administrator privileges and do
whatever it wants with the system--infect other users' files, attack
other systems, etc.
A trivial improvement of the above scenario (in terms of speeding up the
virus' spread) would be for the attacker to place the virus in some kind
of Trojan Horse--for example, in an attractive game or utility--placed
in a publicly accessible area.
Why, then, are there so many fewer viruses for mainframe computers than
for personal ones? The answer to this question is complex. First,
writing a well-made mainframe virus--one that does not cause problems
and is likely to remain unnoticed--is not a trivial task. It requires a
lot of knowledge about the operating system. This knowledge is not
commonly available and the typical youngster who is likely to hack a
quick-and-dirty PC virus is unlikely to possess it or be in a position
to learn it. People who possess this knowledge are likely to use it in
more constructive, satisfying, and profitable ways. Second, the culture
of software exchange in the mainframe world differs considerably from
that of the PC world--we don't see many VMS users running around with a
bootable tape of the latest game... Third, very often it is easier to
attack a mainframe computer by using some security hole or a Trojan
Horse, instead of by using a virus.
So, computer viruses for mainframe computers are definitely possible and
several already exist (see question F1). Also, some IBM PC viruses can
infect any IBM PC compatible machine, even if it runs a "real" OS like
Unix. For more information, refer to questions D6 and E7.
Forms of malware other than computer viruses--notably Trojan Horses--are
far quicker, more effective, and harder to detect than computer viruses.
Nevertheless, on personal computers many more viruses are written than
Trojan Horses. There are two reasons for this:
1. Since a virus is self-propogating, the number of users to
which it can spread (and cause damage) can be much greater
than in the case of a Trojan;
2. It's almost impossible to trace the source of a virus since
(generally) viruses are not attached to any particular
program.
For further information on malicious programs on multi-user systems, see
Matt Bishop's paper, "An Overview of Malicious Logic in a Research
Environment", available by anonymous FTP on Dartmouth.edu (IP =
129.170.16.4) as pub/security/mallogic.ps.
E8) Some people say that disinfecting is a bad idea. Is that true?
Disinfection is completely "safe" only if the disinfecting process
completely restores the non-infected state of the object. That is, not
only must the virus be removed from the object, but the original length
must be restored exactly, as well as any system attributes (such as time
and date of last modification, fields in the header, etc). Sometimes it
is necessary to be sure that the object is placed on the same sectors of
the disk that it occupied prior to infection (this is particularly
important for some system areas and some files from programs which use
certain kinds of self-checking or copy protection).
None of the currently available disinfecting programs do all this. For
instance, because of the bugs that exist in many viruses and because
some infection processes involve overwriting (part of) the objects of
infection, some of the information about the original object may be
irrevocably destroyed. Sometimes it is not even possible to detect that
this information has been destroyed and to warn the user. Furthermore,
some viruses corrupt information very slightly and in a random way
(Nomenklatura, Ripper), so that it is not even possible to tell which
objects have been corrupted.
Therefore, it is usually better to replace infected objects with clean
backups, provided you are certain that your backups are uninfected (see
D10), or from the original media. You should try to disinfect files
only if they contain some valuable data that cannot be restored from
backups or recompiled from their original source.
E9) Can I avoid viruses by avoiding shareware, free software or games?
No. There are many documented instances in which even commercial
"shrink wrapped" software was inadvertently distributed containing
viruses. Avoiding shareware, freeware, games, etc, only isolates you
from a vast collection of software (some of it very good, some of it
very bad, most of it somewhere in between...).
The important thing is not to avoid a certain type of software, but to
be cautious of *any and all* newly acquired software and diskettes.
Merely scanning all new software media for known viruses would be rather
effective at preventing virus infections, especially when combined with
some other prevention/detection strategy such as integrity management of
programs.
E10) Can I contract a virus on my PC by performing a "DIR" of an
infected floppy disk?
Assuming the PC you are using is virus free before you perform the DIR
command, then the answer is "No".
When you perform a DIR, the contents of the boot sector of the diskette
are loaded into a buffer for use in determining disk layout etc, and
certain antivirus products will scan these buffers. If a boot sector
virus has infected your diskette, the virus code will be contained in
the buffer, which may cause some antivirus packages to produce a message
like "xyz virus found in memory...". In fact, the virus is not a threat
at this point since control of the CPU is never passed to the virus code
residing in the buffer. Even though the virus is really not a threat at
this point, this message should not be ignored. If you get a message
like this, and then reboot from a clean DOS diskette (see G8) and scan
your hard-drive and find no virus, then you know that the false positive
was caused by an infected boot-sector loaded into a buffer, and the
diskette should be disinfected before use. The use of DIR will not
infect a clean system, even if the diskette it is being performed on
does contain a virus (see C8 also). Please note, however, that running
DIR on a diskette can result in the infection of a clean diskette if the
PC is already infected.
Despite our categorical "No" answer above, there is a small risk that a
virus infection could be transferred from a floppy through a DIR
listing. If you use an ANSI console driver that allows key remapping,
it is possible that a specially prepared diskette could reprogram your
keyboard so that pressing a particular key caused an infected program on
the diskette to run the next time the reprogrammed key was pressed. The
risk of such an attack is very low and can easily be negated following
the general advice for preventing ANSI bombs (see B14).
Mac users with system software prior to version 7.0 should be aware of a
greater threat in their environment. Various system resources (which
can contain executable code) are loaded from the automatic access to a
diskette that is part of the system building its desktop view of the
diskette's contents. When such a resource is required, the most
recently loaded one will be used. Thus, if a diskette with a virus-
infected resource in the Desktop file is in your Mac's drive, and an
uninfected copy of that resource has not subsequently loaded from
elsewhere, the next time that resource is required the infected copy
will be executed, along with the virus. This kind of attack was removed
with the introduction of version 7.0 (and later) of the system software,
which handles such things quite differently. A common Mac virus, WDEF,
uses this infection path, as do a few others.
Early versions of AmigaDOS are susceptible to a threat similar to the
Mac WDEF virus--on inserting a diskette into the drive, the operating
system runs the Disk Validator from the diskette. At least one Amiga
virus, Saddam, attaches itself to Disk Validator to help it spread.
Version 2.0 of AmigaDOS eliminated the threat of this type of attack by
removing the need for the Disk Validator.
E11) Is there any risk in copying data files from an infected floppy
disk to a clean PC's hard disk?
Assuming that you did not boot or run any executable programs from the
infected disk, the answer generally is no. There are two caveats:
1. You should be somewhat concerned about checking the integrity
of these data files as they may have been destroyed or
altered by the virus.
2. If any of the "data" files are interpretable as executable by
some other program (such as a Lotus macro) then these files
should be treated as potentially malicious until the symptoms
of the infection are known.
The copying process itself is safe (given the above scenario) although
you should be concerned with what type of files are being copied to
avoid introducing other problems.
E12) Can a DOS virus survive and spread on an OS/2 system using the
HPFS file system?
Yes, both file-infecting and boot sector viruses can infect HPFS
partitions. File-infecting viruses function normally and can activate
and do their dirty deeds, and boot sector viruses can prevent OS/2 from
booting if the primary bootable partition is infected. Viruses that try
to address disk sectors directly cannot function under OS/2 because the
operating system prevents this activity.
E13) Under OS/2 2.0+, could a virus infected DOS session infect another
DOS session?
Each DOS program is run in a separate Virtual DOS Machine (their memory
spaces are kept separate by OS/2). However, any DOS program has almost
complete access to the files and disks, so infection can occur if the
virus infects files; any other DOS session that executes a program
infected by a virus that makes itself memory resident would itself
become infected.
Also, bear in mind that generally all DOS sessions share the same copy
of the command interpreter. Hence if *it* becomes infected, the virus
will be active in *all* DOS sessions.
E14) Can normal DOS viruses work under MS Windows?
Most of them cannot. A system that runs exclusively MS Windows is, in
general, more virus-resistant than a plain DOS system. The reason is
that most resident viruses are not compatible with the memory management
in Windows. Furthermore, most existing viruses will damage Windows
applications if they try to infect them as normal (i.e. DOS) EXE files.
The damaged applications will stop working and this will alert the user
that something is wrong.
Virus-resistant however, is by no means virus-proof. For instance, most
of the well-behaved resident viruses that infect only COM files (Cascade
is an excellent example), will work perfectly in a "DOS box". All non-
resident COM infectors will be able to run and infect too. Aside from
DOS viruses, MS Windows users can also contract several currently known
Windows-specific viruses, which are able to infect Windows applications
properly (i.e., they are compatible with the NewEXE file format).
Any low level trapping of Interrupt 13, as by resident boot sector and
MBR viruses, can also affect Windows operation, particularly if
protected disk access (32BitDiskAccess=ON in SYSTEM.INI) is used.
E15) Can I get a virus from reading e-mail, BBS message forums or
USENET News?
In general terms, the answer is no. E-mail messages and postings on
BBSes and News are text data and will not be executed as programs.
Computer viruses are programs, and must be executed to do anything, so
the simple act of reading online messages doesn't pose a threat of
catching a computer virus.
There are a few provisos to be made. If your computer uses ANSI screen
and keyboard controls, you may be susceptible to an ANSI bomb (see B14).
An ANSI bomb may, merely by being placed in text read on the screen,
temporarily redefine keys on the keyboard to perform various functions.
It is, however, very unlikely that you will ever see an ANSI bomb in
e-mail, or that it could do significant damage while you are reading
mail.
Another possibility is that mail can be used to send programs. To do
this program files have to be encoded into a special form so the binary
(8-bit) program files are not corrupted by transfer over the text-only
(7-bit) e-mail transport medium. Probably the commonest of these
encoding schemes is uuencoding, though there are several others. If you
receive an encoded program, you normally have to use a decoding program
or special option in your e-mail program to extract it and decode it
before it can be run. Once you have extracted the program though, you
should then treat it as you would any other program whose source you do
not know, and test it before you run it.
A third possibility is with the newer, highly-automated online systems.
Some of these attempt to make online access much easier for the user by
automating such features as file transfer and program updates. At least
one commercial online service is known to have the capability of sending
new programs to the user and to invoke those programs while the user is
still online. While there is no reason to assume that any service that
does this *will* infect you, any time things are going on that you are
not being told about, you are at greater risk.
E16) Can a virus "hide" in a GIF or JPEG file?
The simple answer is "no". The complete answer is more complex.
GIF and JPEG (.JPG) files contain compressed graphical information.
Every now and then, rumors arise that is possible to infect those files
with a virus in such a way, that it will spread when you display one of
these images. This is technically impossible--no part of the GIF or
JPEG format contains code that is executed by the viewer program.
It *is* possible to use the least significant bit of the color
information for each pixel in GIF files to store additional information,
without visibly altering the quality of the picture contained in the
file. This is called "steganography" and is sometimes used to transmit
secretly encrypted messages. Since a virus is nothing more than
information, it is possible to "encode" it into a GIF file and transmit
it this way. However, the recipients must be aware that the GIF file
contains such hidden information and take some deliberate steps to
extract it--it cannot happen against their will.
========================================
= Section F. Miscellaneous Questions =
========================================
F1) How many viruses are there?
It is not possible to give an exact number because new viruses are
literally being created every day. Furthermore, different antivirus
researchers use different criteria to decide whether two viruses are
different or one and the same. Some count viruses as different if they
differ by at least one bit in their non-variable code. Others group
viruses in families and do not count the closely related variants within
a family as different viruses.
Further, some antivirus researchers have samples in their collections
that they count as viruses, but that several other experts strongly deny
are viruses. Sometimes these are "partial viruses", where a virus has
not properly infected a host and are therefore non-infective, other
times they are well-known non-viruses. As some of these non-viruses are
known to be in some of the common test sets, some antivirus software
vendors count them amongst the viruses they detect.
As of January 1995 there were about 5,600 PC viruses, about 150 Amiga
viruses, about 100 Acorn Archimedes viruses, about 45 Macintosh viruses,
several Atari ST viruses, a few Apple II viruses, four Unix viruses,
three MS Windows viruses, at least two OS/2 viruses and two VMS DCL-
based viruses.
Fortunately, few of the existing viruses are widespread. For instance,
only about three dozen of the known PC viruses cause most of the
reported infections and fewer than 200 PC viruses have been found in the
wild at all.
F2) How do viruses spread so quickly?
This is a very complex issue, and some viruses don't spread quickly at
all (though talk of them often does!).
Those that do spread widely are able to do so for a variety of reasons.
A large target population--millions of compatible computers--helps. A
large virus population helps. Vendors whose quality assurance relies
on, for example, outdated scanners, help. Users who gratuitously
install new software on their systems without making any attempt to test
for viruses help. All of these things are factors.
F3) What is the correct plural of "virus"? "Viruses" or "viri" or
"virii" or "vira" or...
The correct English plural of "virus" is "viruses". The Latin word is a
mass noun (like "air") and, therefore, there is no correct Latin plural.
Please use "viruses", and if people use other forms, please do *not* use
Virus-L/comp.virus to correct them.
F4) When reporting a virus infection (and looking for assistance), what
information should be included?
People frequently post messages to Virus-L/comp.virus requesting
assistance with a suspected virus problem. Quite often the information
supplied is insufficient for the various experts on the list to be able
to help at all. Also, please note that any such assistance from members
of the list is provided on a voluntary basis; be grateful for any help
received. Try to provide the following information in your requests for
assistance:
1. The date and location (town and country) of suspected
infection.
2. The name of the virus (if known)
3. The program (or programs) and version that called the virus
by that name.
4. Any other antivirus software that you are running and whether
it has been able to detect the virus or not, and if yes, what
name it called the virus.
5. Your software and hardware configuration (computer type,
kinds of disk(ette) drives, amount of memory and
configuration (extended/expanded/conventional), the exact
version of your OS, TSR programs and device drivers used,
control panels and INITs, etc.).
6. Any "unusual" behavior that has occurred recently and any new
software (including upgrades) you have recently installed.
It is helpful if you can use more than one scanning program to identify
a virus, and to say which scanner gave which identification. However,
some scanning programs leave "scan strings" in memory which will confuse
others, so it is best to do a "cold reboot" between runs of successive
scanners, particularly if you are getting conflicting results (see C6).
F5) How often should we upgrade our antivirus tools to minimize
software and labor costs and maximize our protection?
This is a difficult question to answer. Antivirus software is a kind of
insurance, and these type of calculations are difficult.
There are two things to watch out for here: the general "style" of the
software, and the scan strings that scanners use to identify viruses.
Scanners should be updated more frequently than other software, and it
is probably a good idea to update a scanner's set of scan strings at
least once every two months. In the six or so months prior to January
1995, most of the popular PC-based virus scanners typically added
detection of about 500-600 new viruses or variants--this averages out to
between two and three new viruses per day!
Some antivirus software looks for changes to programs or specific types
of viral "activity", and these programs generally claim to be good for
"all current and future viral programs". However, even these programs
cannot guarantee to protect against all future viruses, as new "attack"
and anti-antivirus methods are continually being developed by virus
writers. Thus, even this type of antivirus software needs to be
upgraded occasionally.
Of course, not every antivirus product is effective against all viruses,
even if upgraded regularly. Thus, do *not* depend on the fact that you
have upgraded your product recently as a guarantee that your system is
free of viruses!
F6) What are "virus simulators" and what use are they?
There are three different kinds of programs that are often called "virus
simulators". None of the three generate actual viruses. The first kind
demonstrate the audio- and video-effects of some real computer viruses.
The second kind are programs that simulate a virtual environment--a
virtual computer, with virtual disks, virtual files, and virtual viruses
on them. The user of such programs can manipulate the simulated
objects, letting the simulated viruses infect the simulated files on the
simulated disks, watching every step of the process, without a danger of
"real infection". The third kind are programs that generate files
containing scan strings used by some scanners to detect real viruses.
The idea is that those scanners will detect the generated files too,
thus letting the user get the feeling of what discovering a virus is
like, but without the danger of risking a real infection.
There are three ways in which virus simulators are usually used:
1) For educational purposes. The second kind of virus simulators are
very useful and valuable for this purpose, provided the simulated
environment is realistic enough. The first kind are also somewhat
useful--mainly teaching the users what the video- or audio-effects of
particular viruses are like. There is the danger, however, that users
will get the incorrect impression that *every* computer virus
demonstrates itself in some visible or audible way. The third kind of
virus simulators are not useful for this purpose--they do not show how
computer viruses work, do not show what computer viruses do, and because
their virus fragments are not reliably detected as viruses by many good
scanners, may give the wrong impression of a scanner's value.
2) As an installation check that antivirus defenses are installed and
working. The first and second kinds of virus simulators are unsuitable
for this, because they do not trigger any antivirus defenses. Even the
third kind of virus simulators have a rather limited value in this
regard, as the files generated by them often fail to trigger virus
defenses, which are designed to protect against *real* viruses. Unlike
the producers of such simulators, many believe it is the job of the
producer of an antivirus product to provide the means of checking
whether their product is installed and working. This position is based
on the authors knowing their products better than anyone else and that
updated check methods will normally be provided as the antivirus
defenses employed in any given product change.
3) As a test of the quality of the antivirus defense--usually a scanner.
Again, the first two kinds of simulators are unsuitable for this purpose
because they do not trigger antivirus defenses. The third kind of virus
simulators often do, from which many users get the impression that they
are suitable for these testing purposes. This is a serious
misconception. The files that such programs generate are not real
viruses; antivirus programs, particularly virus-specific ones like
scanners, are designed to detect real viruses. Therefore, one must not
draw a conclusion from the ability or the inability of a product to
detect "simulated viruses" of the third kind--the fact that they are
detected does not necessarily mean that a real virus will be detected,
and the fact that they are not detected does not mean that the real
virus it is supposed to represent will not be detected!
One exception to the above are simulators that do not generate files
containing scan strings, but which simulate the different kinds of
attacks that real viruses use, but without being able to replicate.
Examples of such attacks include different methods of tunnelling,
stealth, attacks against integrity checkers, and so on. Such simulators
are useful for testing antivirus products that are not virus-specific,
especially if the simulator exercises a wide range of known attacks.
F7) I've heard talk of "good viruses". Is it possible to use a
computer virus for something useful?
A very hotly debated topic that has flared-up dramatically several times
in Virus-L/comp.virus. The answer to this is not simple and largely
hinges on your definition or interpretation of the term computer virus.
By definition (see B1), viruses do not have to do something "bad"
(although many people argue that the uninvited "resource wasting" that
is almost inherent in viral activity is necessarily bad). From this
point (and based on his somewhat esoteric definition of the term
computer virus) Fred Cohen has argued that "good" or "useful" computer
viruses are a serious possibility. In fact, Dr. Cohen offered a reward
of $1000 for the first clearly "useful" virus--despite several potential
claimants, however, he hasn't paid up.
Although there has never been a position that was widely agreed upon as
a result of any of these discussions, many contributors to this forum
believe that there are serious problems with the idea of implementing
useful computing functionality through self-replicating programs.
Vesselin Bontchev's paper originally delivered at the 1994 EICAR
conference, titled "Are `Good' Computer Viruses Still a Bad Idea?", is
available by anonymous FTP from ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (IP =
134.100.4.42), as pub/virus/texts/viruses/goodvir.zip. *Anyone* wishing
to raise this discussion in Virus-L/comp.virus again should read and
carefully consider this paper before posting. It contains many strong
arguments against the idea of "good computer viruses", and some
prescriptions of how good viruses would have to be implemented and
distributed to deserve the label "good". To date no strong arguments
countering the points in this paper or otherwise arguing in favor of the
concept of good viruses have been posted to the group.
F8) Wouldn't adding self-checking code to your programs be a good idea?
Every few months somebody suggests the idea of adding a small piece of
code to existing programs. This code would check for virus infections
when the program is executed by comparing a previously computed CRC or
cryptographic checksum (hash value) of the file in its known clean state
with its current value. The idea is that this will detect any virus
infection immediately, and is thus effective against unknown viruses.
A simple and intuitively attractive idea--in fact, some antivirus
programs have included options to do just this. There are, however,
some serious flaws with this approach.
This method cannot prevent the program from getting infected in the
first place. Further, if a program that has been protected this way
becomes infected later, whenever it is run the virus code will be
activated first. The virus may then be able to detect or even remove
the self-checking code, or it might make it totally ineffective by using
stealth techniques, so the self-checking code only "sees" the original,
non-infected program.
Some programs contain an internal self-check--much antivirus software,
for example. Such internal code might also be unable to detect stealth
viruses, but unless the external self-check code uses stealth techniques
too, the result will be a conflict, where the internal check will notice
the newly added code and decide that it has been "infected".
Moreover, this method is ineffective against "companion" viruses that
don't modify the applications they infect.
It may not be possible to protect all programs this way. For example,
under DOS it is relatively easy to add code of this type to most COM
files (unless the original program was slightly less than 64K, and the
resulting file would break that limit). However, EXE files are more of
a problem--especially those containing internal overlays, where one
cannot append the code to the file, as the resulting file might become
too big to load. Windows applications are also a problem, as they have
two different entry points, and special care has to be taken to handle
that correctly.
On the other hand, adding internal self-checking to programs as part of
their development is a good idea. Although it has the same limitations
regarding stealth viruses, it does not cause the conflicts described
above, and can be put in any program at compile-time. It is also much
more difficult for viruses to bypass.
===================================================================
= Section G. Specific Virus and Antivirus Software Questions... =
===================================================================
G1) I was infected by the Jerusalem virus and disinfected the infected
files with my favorite antivirus program. However, WordPerfect
and some other programs still refuse to work. Why?
The Jerusalem virus and WordPerfect 4.2 program combination is an
example of a virus and program that cannot be completely disinfected by
an antivirus tool. In some cases such as this, the virus will destroy
code by overwriting it instead of appending itself to the file. The
only solution is to re-install the programs from clean (non-infected)
backups or distribution media (see D10 and E8).
G2) Is my disk infected with the Stoned virus?
Of course the answer to this, and many similar questions, is to obtain a
good virus detector. There are many to choose from, including ones that
will scan diskettes automatically as you use them. As Stoned is a boot
sector infector, remember to check all diskettes, even non-system or
"data" diskettes (see E1).
It is possible, if you have an urgent need to check a system when you
don't have any antivirus tools, to run CHKDSK or MEM and note down the
values reported (see C1) and then to boot from a known clean system
diskette and compare the results returned by CHKDSK or MEM. If the
total amount of conventional memory reported is different between the
two boots then you may have a viral problem but this information alone
cannot tell us if it is Stoned. If you cannot see the PC's hard disk
(usually the C: drive) then it is even more likely you have a virus
problem, though definitely not Stoned. If you have a "disk editor" type
program, looking at the boot sector of a suspect floppy, or the MBR of
the suspect hard drive may be helpful. If you have Stoned, the first
byte will indicate the characteristic far jump of the virus (hex: EA)
instead of the more common short jump (hex: EB) of the boot loader.
Even if that is the first byte, you could be looking at a perfectly good
disk that has been "inoculated" against the virus *or* is infected with
some other virus which makes similar changes, or at a diskette that
seems safe but contains a totally different type of virus.
G3) I was told that the Stoned virus displays the text "Your PC is now
Stoned" at boot time. I have been infected by this virus several
times, but have never seen the message. Why?
The "original" Stoned message was ".Your PC is now Stoned!", where the
"." represents the "bell" character (ASCII 7 or "PC speaker beep"). The
message is displayed with a probability of 1 in 8 *only* when a PC is
booted from an infected *diskette*. When booting from an infected hard
disk, Stoned never displays this message.
Further, versions of Stoned with no message whatsoever or only the
leading bell character have become very common. These versions of
Stoned are likely to go unnoticed by all but the most observant, even
when regularly booting from infected diskettes.
Contrary to some reports, the Stoned virus does *not* display the
message "LEGALISE MARIJUANA", although such a string is quite clearly
visible in the boot sectors of diskettes and MBR's of hard disks
infected with the "original" version of Stoned.
G4) I was infected by both Stoned and Michelangelo. Why has my
computer become unbootable? And why, each time I run my favorite
scanner, does it find one of the viruses and say that it is
removed, but when I run it again, it says that the virus is still
there?
These two viruses store the original Master Boot Record at one and the
same place on the hard disk. They do not recognize each other, and
therefore a computer can become infected with both of them at the same
time.
The first of these viruses that infects the computer will overwrite the
Master Boot Record with its body and store the original MBR at a certain
place on the disk. So far, this is normal for a boot-record virus. But
if now the other virus infects the computer too, it will replace the MBR
(which now contains the virus that has come first) with its own body,
and store what it believes is the original MBR (but in fact is the body
of the first virus) *at the same place* on the hard disk, thus
*overwriting* the original MBR. When this happens, the contents of the
original MBR are lost. Therefore the disk becomes non-bootable.
When a virus removal program inspects such a hard disk, it will see the
*second* virus in the MBR and will try to remove it by overwriting it
with the contents of the sector where this virus normally stores the
original MBR. However, now this sector contains the body of the *first*
virus. Therefore, the virus removal program will install the first
virus in trying to remove the second. In all probability it will not
wipe out the sector where the (infected) MBR has been stored.
When the program is run again, it will find the *first* virus in the
MBR. By trying to remove it, the program will get the contents of the
sector where this virus normally stores the original MBR, and will move
it over the current (infected) MBR. Unfortunately, this sector still
contains the body of the *first* virus. Therefore, the body of this
virus will be re-installed over the MBR ad infinitum.
There is no easy solution to this problem, since the contents of the
original MBR are lost. The only solution for the antivirus program is
to detect that there is a problem, and to overwrite the contents of the
MBR with a valid MBR program, which the antivirus program has to provide
itself. If your favorite antivirus program is not that smart, consider
replacing it with a better one, or try using the boot sector
disinfection procedure described elsewhere (see C3).
In general, infection of the same file or area by multiple viruses is
possible and vital areas of the original may be lost. This can make it
difficult or impossible for virus disinfection tools to be effective,
and replacement of the lost file/area will be necessary.
G5) My scanner finds the Filler and/or Israeli Boot virus in memory,
but after I boot from a clean floppy it reports no viruses. Am I
infected?
This is almost certainly a "false positive" (see C5). One particular,
popular antivirus product (usually its TSR scanner/monitor VSAFE) leaves
its scan strings in memory in an unencoded form, and is well-known for
causing false positives on Filler and Israeli Boot. Your other scanner
sees the first's scan strings (at least those for Filler and/or Israeli
Boot) and reports a virus in memory. When you boot from a floppy you
(probably) are not loading the resident scanner, so it doesn't have a
chance to "booby-trap" your other scanner. To fix this problem, try
adding "REM " to the beginning of the line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT or
CONFIG.SYS file that loads the suspect TSR, and see if the problem
disappears.
G6) I was infected with Flip and now a large part of my hard disk
seems to have disappeared. What has happened?
Flip has a logic error, probably based on its author only knowing about
hard disk partitioning schemes under DOS 3.x (where partitions could not
exceed 32MB in size).
Part of Flip's infection routine decrements by six the "total number of
sectors" field in the BIOS Parameter Block (BPB--a table of critical
disk geometry data) in the DOS boot sector of the boot partition. For
partitions of 32MB and under this field is meaningful, but in larger
partitions, this field is set to zero and a field in the "extended BPB"
contains the "big number of sectors" for that partition instead. Not
knowing about larger partitions, Flip renders the large partitions it
meets a shade under 32MB. The fix for this is to use a disk sector
editor to set the word at offset 13h of the affected DOS boot sector to
"00 00" (they should be set to "FA FF" if the situation above applies).
If you don't understand these instructions, do *not* attempt to follow
them and seek the help of a more technically knowledgeable person.
G7) What does the GenB and/or the GenP virus do?
There is no such thing as *the* GenB or GenP virus. It is a heuristic
used by a very popular scanner to detect boot sector viruses and means
"There is something very suspicious in the boot sector (GenB) or in the
MBR (GenP), and I am pretty sure that it is a virus, however, I have no
idea which particular virus it might be". You should run a scanner
which has better recognition and identification capabilities (see B15),
if you want to know which particular virus you have. One advantage of
the GenB/GenP report is that you can often use the disinfection utility
from the same producer to remove the virus, even if no other scanner can
remove it. When told to remove the GenB/GenP "virus", the utility scans
the disk for something that looks like a saved copy of the original boot
sector or MBR and will put it back in place, thus removing the virus, or
it writes a good generic MBR if there is an apparently valid partition
table in the virus MBR.
G8) How do I "boot from a clean floppy"?
"Put it in the A: drive and turn the power on."
The facetious answer aside, the real question here is usually more one
of "How do I ensure I have a clean boot floppy?"
As with so many issues concerning viruses, the important thing is to be
prepared *in advance*. As with backups, a current, clean boot disk
should be a standard part of every personal computer system, as there
are other occasions than when facing a real or suspected virus infection
where being able to boot your computer to a "known good" state are
useful or desirable (e.g. you accidentally delete your disk-compression
driver from your hard disk). As with backups, a current, clean boot
disk is one of the standard parts of a personal computer system most
commonly missing.
The important thing in preparing a clean boot diskette, especially where
it has to be used with a (suspected) virus infection, is that it must
*not* run a single byte of code from your hard disk. This means your
boot floppy must contain all the basic operating system files, device
drivers and configuration commands necessary to make your system
minimally usable. This diskette must be prepared on a system that is,
itself, guaranteed "clean" and it should be write-protected immediately
after it is completed. Aside from a basic, minimal operating system,
your emergency boot diskette should contain the utilities necessary to
install your OS to a hard disk *and* basic diagnostic or "fix it"
programs and your favorite antivirus tools. Depending upon disk space
considerations, you may need additional diskettes to hold all these
utilities. For example, if you use DOS it is a good idea to copy the
following utility programs to your emergency boot disk (if your version
of DOS includes them): FDISK, CHKDSK and/or SCANDISK, FORMAT, SYS, MEM,
UNFORMAT, UNDELETE, MSD.
When it comes to rebooting your computer from a clean system disk, it is
most important that you perform a "cold start". On a PC, this means
pressing the reset button or turning the power off on again, *not* by
pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del. Regardless of the machine type, if you are
unsure, use the power off then power on method just described. It is
even more important that your machine is correctly configured to try
booting from the floppy first. Most contemporary BIOSes have an option
to select the boot order (A: then C: or C: then A:)--this must be set to
A: then C: for this procedure, though normally we strongly recommend
that you set this option to C: then A:.
As systems change from time to time, you may occasionally need to update
this most critical of diskettes so it will still boot your system to a
usable state. As you may have recently contracted a new virus that
bypasses your current antivirus precautions, this update process can put
you at risk of infecting your "clean" emergency boot diskette. Because
of this, it is prudent to have two such diskettes. With system changes
you would update these in a "leap frog" manner. This means your
previous emergency boot diskette might still bring your machine up to a
minimally useful state (such that you may still be able to make repairs)
should your updated emergency boot diskette be infected by a previously
unknown virus.
Unfortunately, this isn't the whole story either! A PC virus known as
EXE_Bug can fake out the boot process by setting the PC's CMOS to look
as if there are no floppy drives in the machine. Most BIOS'es don't
even try to boot from a floppy in this case, and go straight to the hard
disk, loading the virus from the MBR. When EXE_Bug first loads into
memory, it checks to see if there is a diskette in the first floppy
drive, and if there is, it loads the boot sector from the diskette and
lets the floppy boot as normal. Most people don't notice the subtly
different boot time and drive access order involved in this, so they
think they have booted clean, when in fact the virus is active in
memory! To circumvent this possibility, you have to check the PC's CMOS
settings before letting the floppy boot proceed, make sure that your PC
"knows" it has a floppy drive, *and*, with some PCs, make sure that the
boot order option is set to "A: then C:". This presents a chicken-and-
egg situation on some machines, as you may have to boot DOS on the
machine to be able to run the utility program that lets you change its
CMOS settings.
Remember, if you changed your BIOS's boot order option, set it back to
C: then A: after disinfecting your PC.
G9) My PC diagnostic utility lists "Cascade" amongst the hardware
interrupts (IRQs). Does this mean I have the Cascade virus?
No! This is quite normal on AT-style (286 and better) PCs (and on a few
8086 (XT) class machines). The original IBM PC design had one
Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) to handle hardware interrupts
generated when devices like disk controllers, serial and parallel ports,
LAN adaptors, etc have to be serviced. While developing the AT, IBM
decided that the eight Interrupt ReQuest (IRQ) lines the original PIC
supported were probably insufficient for likely future expansion needs,
so they added a second PIC. The two PIC's had to cooperate, so both
didn't interrupt the CPU concurrently. This was achieved by having the
second PIC use an IRQ to signal the first PIC when it has an IRQ to
service. IRQs 2 and 9 were used for this and are commonly called the
"cascade" IRQ, as they allow the second PIC to cascade an IRQ down to
the first PIC.
G10) Occasionally the text "welcome datacomp" appears in my Mac
documents without me typing it. Is this a virus?
Most likely not. This phenomenon has been reported for a particular
make/model of third-party Macintosh-compatible keyboard. It appears to
be a practical joke, coded into the keyboard's ROM, that causes the
keyboard to output that text (as if it was typed) after a period of
keyboard inactivity. The only practical fix is to replace the keyboard.
This is, in effect, a hardware (technically "firmware") Trojan Horse--
the keyboard has features or functions that are not advertised and that
will be performed without the owner's or user's wish or permission.
G11) How good are the antivirus tools included with MS-DOS 6?
While this FAQ sheet avoids answering specific questions about
particular antivirus software (partly because the ground tends to move
very quickly!), the antivirus tools included with MS-DOS 6 are very
widely distributed and accessible. We will not give a wide-ranging
answer here, but will point out that Microsoft Corporation does not use
MSAV but a competitor's product. We suggest that anyone considering
using the antivirus tools supplied with MS-DOS 6 as a significant part
of their virus defense should read the review available by anonymous FTP
from (amongst others) ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (IP = 134.100.4.42)
as /pub/virus/texts/viruses/msaveval.zip.
G12) When I do a "DIR | MORE", I see two files with random names that
are not there when I just use "DIR". On my friends's system they
cannot be seen. Do I have a virus?
No. DOS's default commandline interpreter (COMMAND.COM) creates two
temporary files with unique names for every pipe character ("|") used on
the command line. Starting with DOS version 5.0, these files are
created in the directory pointed to by the TEMP environment variable,
not in the current directory as they were in earlier DOS versions. If
your TEMP setting is invalid or you have an earlier version of DOS you
will see these files in the current directory when you pipe the output
of a DIR command through MORE (or any other filter). If you don't see
these files in the current directory's listing, performing the command
"DIR | MORE" on the directory specified by the TEMP variable will reveal
them.
Generally, you would be better to use "DIR /P" instead of "DIR | MORE",
as this avoids the creation of the temporary files. If you use an
alternative commandline interpreter, none of the above may apply.
G13) What is the ChipAway virus? (Or ChipAwayVirus?)
The ChipAway virus is not a virus at all. In fact, it is a poorly
chosen name for a good idea. Many PCs have an advanced BIOS feature
that, when activated, prevents any writes to the MBR through BIOS disk
routines. If active, this feature can cause problems if you install non-
DOS operating systems (like OS/2, Windows 95 or Windows NT), as their
installation routines typically need to write to the MBR, but for
general purpose computers, it is a good idea to turn on these options,
if they exist.
Unfortunately, one of the earliest and most widely available
implementations of this idea prints a message on screen at each system
startup to the effect "ChipAwayVirus installed". This is supposed to
calm the owner's nerves, making them confident that their BIOS antivirus
system is working for them. For fairly obvious reasons, it tends to
have the opposite effect!
[End of Virus-L/comp.virus FAQ sheet]
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