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From: XRJDM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Joe McMahon)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Use Disinfectant (Mac)
Message-ID: <0002.8905311730.AA00394@ubu.CC.Lehigh.EDU>
Date: 30 May 89 21:31:36 GMT
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> ... I ran Interferon 3.1 and it showed a virus type 003 in my TOPS
> file ...

I hereby declare June "Stop Using Interferon and Use Disinfectant,
Please" Month. TOPS uses a non-standard, unusual, but NOT illegal or
viral, segmentation scheme. CODE 0 immediately jumps to another
segment, which Interferon labels as a "sneak" (BTW: there is no such
virus; it's just a made-up term).

Interferon's check is too weak; it catches OK programs (like TOPS) and
causes unnecessary heartburn and agonization. Disinfectant does not do
this. It was an attempt to make a "predictive" detector which would
alert you if it found something that looks like a virus.

If you must have a predictive checker, try Steve Brecher's Repair
program (available via anonymous FTP from sumex-aim.stanford.edu as
/info-mac/virus/repair.hqx). It is supposedly able to detect clones of
the nVIR virus and stomp them. It won't find anything else weird,
though.

 --- Joe M.