CompuServe Messages

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. There are a variety of programs that are variously known as Trojan Horses, Bombs, and Viruses. While Bombs are generally destructive (as evidenced by their name), and Trojan Horses are either destructive or for the purpose of theft of data, Viruses have been known to be benign or malignant both. A Virus has shown up on the Amiga, arriving from Europe, and coming from a group calling themselves SCA. Since it is uncertain yet what its purpose is, that is, how destructive it may or may not be, it will pay to check any disks you boot from and kill the virus if found. The method of propogation is as follows. An Amiga is booted with an infected disk. All works normally, with no sign that anything is amiss. If you then reboot the machine with the CTRL-Amiga-Amiga key using an uninfected disk, the virus is transferred to the boot disk, and it too becomes a "carrier", ready to pass it on, and so on. The presence of the virus can be detected by looking at block 1 on a disk. Normally, this will have random data or a pattern of data in it, but you will be able to see the virus quite easily if it is there. Using Sectorama (SEC.ARC in DL 9… DiskZap will not show it), look at block 1 (Cyl 0, Hd 0, Sector 1). If the virus is present, run INSTALL on the disk. INSTALL will rewrite sectors 0 and 1, killing the virus. Then, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, TURN OFF the Amiga's power. If you have booted from an infected disk, and have used INSTALL to kill the virus, rebooting without powering off/on will only reinfect the disk. There have been a couple of reports of a message showing up on the screen, and one was followed by the disk being uniusable afterward, but I can't confirm that it was trashed by the virus. The message was: "Something wonderful has happened. Your AMIGA is alive !!! and, even better,,, Some of your disks are infected by a VIRUS !!!" This is the same message that appears in block 1 of an infected disk. Watch for it… stomp it out. Regards, Larry.