"GREG PAKSI" bravely wrote to "JASEN BETTS" (17 Dec 03  00:01:44)
 --- on the heady topic of "Re: Batch file virus ???"

 GP> Notice I said "ASCII" batch file.  There isn't a way for
anthing to be
 GP> encoded.   No special control characters for machine language of any
 GP> sort.

Jasen Betts is absolutely right, there is! Here is an example:

XPPPYZIQD[L-f6-g41GDSCu*SXK,I,IP^P_FX,O,O(GS(GU(GZ(Gnu+J.BETTS03
CFFFRX,`,`2$F={at}!t|rQ0%IuL0%(%(%GERYAARX2%(%t8++j=B|:|>{at}J|(|-([{{at}
*[{)B}(:/jB&B/&J){{at}J|(}-([{{at}]-B{at}*{at}*|--|J^*|J:]}J}<{~""B]}(={
B\:]B"([*-!4vbAw_O>^*W_+>eXBO33%%X7po'7,Tg({at}b0\&(\){
[10:j{[3sQ=$H+E$Z;=P(%:"#-=LORES=-


This sample "_executable_ ASCII" .COM program called LORES.COM, will set
the screen to display text using a large letter font. BTW IIRC it was
likely Jasen who posted it in another FIDO echo.

BUT this type of ASCII encoding isn't the only way to spread a virus.
There are others I know of. One for example uses ANSI escape sequences
to reprogram your keyboard keypresses with macros that may totally
destroy your harddisk. I'm not detailing it however but I ran a simpler
much less dangerous test with a friend sysop and completely locked out
his system requiring a hard power down reset! All I had done was to post
a short half dozen byte ANSI sequence as reply in a message area. ;-)

 Mike
 ****

... When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30