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From: dmg@lid.mitre.org (David Gursky)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: INIT 29 question from Jim Bradley...
Message-ID: <0004.8910241915.AA18801@ge.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 89 12:50:37 GMT
Sender: Virus Discussion List <VIRUS-L@IBM1.CC.Lehigh.EDU>
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Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

In Virus-L V2 #220, Jim Bradley asked if an application on a clean
disk opened a data file infected with INIT 29, would the application
then become infected.

No.  While INIT 29 is capable of infecting data files, the virus is
"dormant" essentially.  Code in INIT resources is only executed at
startup, and no other point.  Data files infected with INIT 29 only
represent a threat to your system if they are kept in the same folder
as your System and Finder files.