Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!bu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!apple!agate!shelby!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!vax1.cc.lehigh.edu!cert.sei.cmu.edu!krvw From: CCTR132@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Nick FitzGerald) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Re: Stoned in C: (PC) Message-ID: <0005.9011291846.AA10418@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 29 Nov 90 16:42:00 GMT Sender: Virus Discussion List Lines: 54 Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu dkrause@orion.oac.uci.edu (Doug Krause) writes: > wct1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (William C Tom) writes: > #According to ScanV67, the partition table of my hard disk has been > #infected with the "Stoned" virus. > # > #Two questions: > # > #What effects might I see with this particular infection? > > C: might become unbootable, CHKDSK will find lots of lost clusters, > and you'll get lots of cross-linked files. STONED is the most common virus we see here - in the four months I've been in this job it is the only virus I have had to deal with on campus. (I have had a couple of reports of Jerusalem that were dealt with by the local DOS wizards in the departments concerned.) The only serious problem I've had associated with STONED was an infected hard-disk becoming "inaccessable" following disinfection. (Any attempt to access C: resulted in a "Divide overflow" error message.) This was more than likely due to the disinfector, rather than to STONED per se. Viruses are nasty, an unwanted nuisance, etc - but upping the hysteria with unfounded accusations of the possible effects of given virii (I'm not sure which plural I prefer) isn't going to help any. Nothing personal here Doug, but in my experience the first time CHKDSK ever gets run on a disk is following a (suspected) viral/trojan attack. I've often seen people complain about the sort of things you mention above after running CHKDSK (or whatver) for the first time (after having the machine for months/years), and then promptly blame the last "unusual" or "suspicious" thing they remember occurring as the culprit - "That new game", where all that happened was that someone did a DIR on the floppy and got a "General failure error" message etc. Much better that PC-users are well-informed about the different viruses out there and that they be made aware of the likelihood and means of infection. The more they know about the operating system and how to use some of the basic diagnostics (CHKDSK, etc) the better but, realistically, it isn't very likely that people will bother with the latter - they see the PC as a tool to help them in their work, and don't much care about its workings (so long as it works as they imagine it should). PC-users *ARE* talking about virii so we should do our utmost to ensure they are not misinformed. Have you actually seen these symptoms and were they conclusively due to STONED?? Has anyone else seen something similar that can clearly be attributed to STONED? Answers to these questions welcome (maybe mail is more appropriate) - discussion of other points/issues to the group. I'm not saying STONED is a *safe* virus (perish the thought), but it *IS* much less of a threat/nuisance than many others. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nick FitzGerald, PC Applications Consultant, CSC, Uni of Canterbury, N.Z. Internet: n.fitzgerald@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Phone: (64)(3) 642-337