CompuServe Messages

Jim, Now there's the one thing we really didn't need… an unconfirmed rumor about a new virus. I was told of this program by a someone who had run it, and afterward had some problems with his hard drive. As you know, there are a lot of reasons other than a virus that could cause hard drive problems, and one instance of hard drive problems after running a program certainly constitutes no more than a possibility that the particular program was at fault. CBM was informed of the possibility, and did some testing, and when I was told, I downloaded it and did some testing myself. The results of CBM's and my testing were both negative, and I spoke with the person at CBM who tested it. Our opinions were the same. Our testing does not guarantee that the program is not a virus, but we both felt it was worth keeping an eye open for any more instances that placed suspicion on it. My testing was done as follows… I built a 'system' disk on one of my 20 meg drives, including the executable of DOC. I then copied that entire partition to the second 20 meg drive. This was for comparison before and after running DOC. I ran DOC by 1. Booting from a disk with DOC on it. 2. Running it from a floppy. 3. Running it from the hard drive. This was with the second 20 meg drive powered down. After numerous runs, each for a period of 3-5 minutes, I checked for any differences between the files on the 2 20 meg drive. There were none. Regardless of this, we have removed DOC from public view in the lLIB, and will await developments before deciding whether to make it public or not. If you can confirm any other cases of possible infection, please do so. Otherwise, it's not productive to spread an unfounded rumor.