* Carbons sent to: All
For the second time in 6 months, my wife has brought home a computer
virus from Arizona State University.  This one is called DA'BOYS (the
last one was STEALTH-C).
This one follows the now familiar pattern of infecting the boot sector
and then infecting memory upon boot-up.  Any disk that is read after
boot-up will be infected (the disk I used to load the anti-virus program
was infected immediately), although if the computer is booted "clean"
and the virus does not enter memory, disks can be read safely.
The virus was detected with the latest version of McAfee DOS
Anti-virus (available on this BBS).  The latest version that I found was
dated 7/30/96.
The virus itself was contained on a school laptop which my wife had
brought home for me to examine.  Upon boot-up of Windows 3.11 a message
screen appeared which suggested that something was wrong and suggesting
that a virus might be involved.  My experience has been that the various
Windows Anti-virus programs cannot be trusted to find the newer viruses.
Cleaning the virus was easy.  The computer *must* be booted clean from
an uninfected disk, however because if the virus is loaded into memory,
during boot-up, it will re-infect the boot sector again, even right
after cleaning.  Strangely, McAfee came back with a message saying that
no specific "cleaner" was available for DA'BOYS but that cleaning with a
generic cleaner was successful.
I have been downloading the latest versions of McAfee Dos as soon as
they come out.  I don't even try a Windows program anymore.  Also,
although I don't know about other universities, I won't even LOOK at
someone from ASU.  They are very computer intensive there and really
don't have a clue!
Peter.Balkan@twb.com
(602) 253-5415
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