Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!eagle!ncastellano
From: ncastellano@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: wierd...problems and a benign? anti-virus
Message-ID: <6207@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 90 00:37:56 GMT
References: <4072@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Distribution: na
Lines: 48

In article <4072@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, ins_bac@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Ajay Choudhri) writes:
> I have seemed to have run into a problem or actually a wierd occurence.
> On my Flash disk I have Pinhead 1.4, MAccel2 and UIS3.
> When I boot up, I get 4 bombs but it proceeds to boot up and works fine.
> IS ther a memory problem here?? I was recently trying to get an EZRAMII to
> work and I am hoping I didn't mess up the MMU seating.
> 
> Secondly, I have no clue where the damn thing came from but I seemed to have
> caught a virus..or anti-virus...
> I suspect I got it off a local bbs from a .MSA file of TeX 
> when I boot-up, I get the message that this is an antivirus and it beeps and flashes when it encounters a disk with an executable boot sector.
> Well I have controlled the infection to only 3 disks but I would rather
> just have the AV gone.  Also if this AV has installed itself, I have noticed
> that when running Codehead's Coderam.prg(ramdisk) before it installs, the
> computer asks me to insert disk Z,then disk Y then disk X all the way to
> disk D which happens to be my ram drive.
> The bad thing is that it happens to be on my utility disk so anything
> I format or such gets the stupid AV.  It may be benign or harmless but I
> have no desire for it...anybody offer any clues..
> 
> thanks from confounded in MD
> -Ajay CHoudhri

Before you completely wipe out the Anti-virus you may want to make a copy of
the a disk with the AV on it and send it to the authors of VIRUSKIL so they
could inspect it and add it to the list of virus programs that their program
can defeat.

There was a discussion of anti-viruses a while back on the security mailing
list (or perhaps it was VIRUS-L) about anti-viruses and the consensus was that
anti-viruses are just as much an invasion of data privacy as any other virus,
inless intentionally installed (on your own media).  Since these programs
exhibit all the same properties as other viruses (i.e. self-replication,
infection of disks that don't already contain the virus, etc.) they are just as
"bad" as any other virus (especially since it may really be a harmful virus
posing as an anti-virus, waiting for a certain signal to do some real damage.)

                          Nick


-- 
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Mathematics is the subject in which we never know what we are talking about,
nor whether what we are saying is true.  -Bertrand Russell
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Nicholas Steven Castellano     | Box 4127 Wesleyan Station | Disclaimer: I am
ncastellano@eagle.wesleyan.edu | Middletown CT 06457       | irresponsible.
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