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From: silvert@cs.dal.ca (William Silvert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: PageStream 1.8 virus (not a rumor)
Message-ID: <1990Feb16.161809.16602@cs.dal.ca>
Date: 16 Feb 90 16:18:09 GMT
References: <900211.09192530.029680@SFA.CP6> <28923@brunix.UUCP> <9906@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Sender: silvert@cs.dal.ca.UUCP (William Silvert)
Reply-To: bill@biomel.UUCP
Organization: Habitat Ecology Division, BIO
Lines: 42

In article <9906@ttidca.TTI.COM> woodside@ttidcb.tti.com (George Woodside) writes:
>In article <28923@brunix.UUCP> rjd@cs.brown.edu (Rob Demillo) writes:
>...[edited]...
>>This is directly from the horse's mouth, as it were...the statement
>>was issued by SoftLogik, Inc. to the ST Report. It the statement it
>>is refered to as the "key virus." (Anyone hear of this?) Any of the
>>anti-virus programs should take care of it, but Soft Logik is,
>>of course, exchanging disks if you are nervous.
>
>The "KEY" virus is the most widespread virus in the USA. That is
>because it displays no symptoms, it only spreads. It represents
>two dangers:
>1) It spreads to every disk that passes through the ST while the
>virus is active, thus wiping out existing executable boot sectors
>on disks which must have them. This can render a disk which must
>be self-booting useless.
>
>2) It is called the "KEY" virus because, once installed in a
>system, it checks every passing disk for a "KEY" value in the
>boot sector. If it locates one, it will cause the execution of
>whatever code is on that disk, even if the machine is not being
>powered up or reset at the time the "KEY" disk is located. There
>have been no episodes of a "KEY" disk being located reported, to
>date. That doesn't mean they don't exist. That only means that
>I haven't heard of them, or the victim of whatever the "KEY" did
>was not aware of the cause (which is quite likely, if such an event
>has occurred).
>
>Every virus killer I've seen (or written, of course) will eradicate
>this virus.
>
>-- 
>* George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *
>* Path:       woodside@ttidca                          *
>*   or:       ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside *


-- 
Bill Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division.
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2
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