86 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
86 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
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ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
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³ THE VIRUS INFORMER ³ FACT: Did you know that there
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³ your weekly virus newsletter ³ are over 586 Unique viruses
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³ by Mark E. Bishop edited by ³ and over 1300 total viruses
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³ Alan Bechtold ³ including strains?
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ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
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CHAPTER 1: 'THIS WEEK'S VIRUS ALERT'
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(Dark Avenger in Disguise and biting hard!)
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Thank you ...
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Thank you for waiting for this new version of THE VIRUS INFORMER. Some
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of you might know that my wife and I had our first child, a big boy, and
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I took time off from the newsletter to be with my new family member.
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THE DARK AVENGER is becoming quite popular these days among computer
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virus watchers and anti-virus programmers. What has made this virus, which
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interestingly enough is among the older computer viruses discovered way back
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in 1989, a BIG worry among those in the virus industry?
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For starters, the Dark Avenger has recently evolved into what is commonly
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known today as the 'Dark Avenger Mutation Engine.' Similar as to what it
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sounds, this ENGINE is a new kind of computer virus and a threat, indeed.
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This MUTATING ENGINE can be used by virtually anyone to create a mutating
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virus, or what some call a polymorphic virus. Unfortunately to the good name
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of BBSes, this Engine, or program, was discovered and distributed via BBSes.
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Anyone can get their hands on it.
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In addition, this virus uses some fancy encryption procedures that make it
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very difficult to even detect. Believe it or not, and as this engine is
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readily available, conventional viruses are turning up at a rate of 10 to
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20 new viruses per week. According to Steve Gibson in a recent issue of
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INFOWORLD, "the sophistication of the Mutation Engine is amazing and even
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staggering."
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HISTORY OF DARK AVENGER: Discoverd first in the U.S. in 1989 by UC Davis,
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the Dark Avenger had it origin seated back in Bulgaria. It has many alias
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names such as: Black Avenger, Boroda, Eddie, Diana, Rabid Avenger, VAN Soft,
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Dark Avenger 1801, Evil Men, PS!K0, and Dark Avenger-C.
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Dark Avenger is not a Mr. Nice Guy in any sense of the word. It is a
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viscious and damaging computer virus. It infects quickly one's .COM and
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.EXE type files including overlay files and your Command.com file.
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This virus even becomes memory resident and will install itself into
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your system memory becoming memory resident even after you turn your power
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off. And as you might already know, many of your DOS files have the etension
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of .EXE and .COM. So using your DOS COPY command or XCOPY would greatly
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spread this virus around quickly.
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Once your file(s) is infected by the Dark Avenger virus, it will randomly
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overwrite a sector on your disk with a portion of this virus code poisoning
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your files. And if the randomly chosen sector is a portion of one of your
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programs, forget it! Programs and data files once infected by a sector
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being overwritten are permanently damaged and cannot be repaired since the
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original sector has now been lost.
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HOW TO KNOW YOU'VE GOT IT? Generally once infected many of your files
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will increase in size by lengths of an additional 1800 bytes. Also,
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messages such as, "The Dark Avenger, copyright 1988, 1989," as well as
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"This program was written in the city of Sofia. Eddie lives ... somewhere
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in Time!" Crazy!
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If your computer and files do become infected with this virus, power
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off your system and then reboot with a CLEAN WRITE PROTECTED boot diskette,
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usually your original DOS disk as it's write protected. Following, care-
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fully use a disinfector like McAfee's CLEAN program. Make sure to re-scan
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all files again and floppies. Stick a big RED STICKER on those floppies
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that are clean and have been checked out okay.
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WANT TO KNOW IF ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE CAN ACTUALLY DETECT THIS VIRUS?
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Read chapter 4 of this issue of THE VIRUS INFORMER for an informative
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look into this virus written by William S. McKiernan, Vice President of
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McAfee Associates--world leaders in antivirus protection.
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- end -
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Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253
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