Pentagon Virus

Virus Name: Pentagon Aliases: V Status: Extinct Discovered: January, 1988 Symptoms: TSR; BSC 360k floppies; file (see text) Origin: United States Eff Length: N/A Type Code: RF - Resident Floppy Boot Sector Infector Detection Method: [Not in Certification Set] Removal Instructions: MDisk, or DOS SYS command General Comments: The Pentagon virus consists of a normal MS-DOS 3.20 boot sector where the name 'IBM' has been replaced by 'HAL', along with two files. The first file has a name of the hex character 0F9H, and contains the portion of the virus code which would not fit into the boot sector, as well as the original boot sector of the infected disk. The second file is named PENTAGON.TXT and does not appear to be used or contain any data. The 0F9H file is accessed by its absolute storage address. Portions of this virus are encrypted. The Pentagon virus only infects 360K floppies, and will look for and remove the Brain virus from any disk that it infects. It is memory resident, occupying 5K of RAM, and can survive a warm reboot (CTL-ALT-DEL).