PH33R Virus
Virus Name: PH33R
Aliases: PH33R.1332
V Status: Common
Discovered: January, 1996
Symptoms: .COM & .EXE growth; decrease in available free memory
Origin: Australia
Eff Length: 1,332 Bytes
Type Code: PRhAK - Parasitic Resident .COM & .EXE Infector
Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, IBMAV, ViruScan, NAV, NAVDX, PCScan,
AVTK/N, IBMAV/N, NShld, NAV/N
Removal Instructions: Delete infected files
General Comments:
The PH33R virus was received in January, 1996 and appears to be
from Australia. This virus is a memory resident infector of .COM
and .EXE files, including COMMAND.COM. It has been reported to be
"in the wild" in North America.
When the first PH33R infected program is executed, this virus will
install itself memory resident at the top of system memory but below
the 640K DOS boundary, not moving interrupt 12's return. Available
free memory, as indicated by the DOS CHKDSK program from DOS 5.0,
will have decreased by 2,672 bytes. Interrupt 21 will be hooked by
the virus in memory.
Once the PH33R virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM and
.EXE files, including COMMAND.COM, when they are executed. Infected
programs will have a file length increase of 1,332 bytes with the
virus being located at the end of the file. The program's date and
time in the DOS disk directory listing will not be altered. The
following text strings are visible within the viral code:
"Ph33r"
"Qark/VLAD"
It is unknown what this virus may do besides replicate.
See: Vlad