#New Virus hidden on demo
3 messages in this thread
I thought I would pass along a warning about a new virus making the rounds.
It comes in the guise of an actually very nice demo. It shows demons
floating within crystal bubbles, accompanied by very sinister music. If
you should have someone upload this, be careful, it doesn't follow the
virus systems we've grown used to. Rumor is it doesn't need to infect
bootable disks, but all disks. More in the way of speculation and rumor
about this virus is it can somehow cause hardware damage. I hope this
helps. It came to Denver in from the West Coast, and is known here as
"Doc". No author on the upload. Good Luck avoiding this little monster.
Jim Hyatt
Jim, you really should confirm a rumor like this before posting a message
on it. What kind of proof do you have that there's a virus or trojan horse
in "Doc"? "Doc" is widely available, and I've heard no reports of problems
with it. I have it, I've run it several times, it does nothing to your
hardware, it does not write to any disks (even if they're left
un-write-protected) when run, the disk with "Doc" on it is exactly the same
after as before running (you do have to reboot to get out of the demo
though), etc. What exactly are you claiming "Doc" will do to a disk or to
your hardware? I've had no problems with it at all. It's very similar to
many other European demos available, only its better. -Joel
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.