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From: C.Owen@qut.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: Novell virus? (PC)
Message-ID: <0004.9012171526.AA00375@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 90 15:11:46 GMT
Sender: Virus Discussion List <VIRUS-L@LEHIIBM1>
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Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

<hofmeist@cantor.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> (Thomas Hofmeister) writes:

>I know a company which has strange problems under Novell:
>They get lots of zeroes (=ASCII 48) into their ASCII-files where they
>don't belong. In fact, in some files, one in 500 bytes gets corrupted in
>such a way that bit number 4 gets set to 1. (So the 48 comes from
>32 +16).
>Might this be that there's something wrong with the
>installation or is this phenomenon already known as a virus?
>Excuse if this has been discussed on this group before, but
>I'm new here.

I don't know about the zero's, but the problem with bits sounds like
hardware.  We had a similar problem due to a flaky RAM chip in the
Ethernet card.  It only occurred when writing to the network, and
disappeared when the CPU clock speed was dropped 12MHz->6MHz.

Chris Owen                           | c_owen@qut.edu.au
Computer Based Education             | voice +61 7 223 2912
Queensland University of Technology  | FAX   +61 7 229 0874
Brisbane, Australia