Quartz Virus

Virus Name: Quartz Aliases: V Status: New Discovery: July, 1995 Symptoms: .COM & .EXE growth; decrease in available free memory Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 1,420 - 1,426 Bytes Type Code: PRhAK - Parasitic Resident .COM & .EXE Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, VAlert, ViruScan, Sweep, IBMAV, PCScan, NAV, NAVDX, PCScan, ChAV, NShld, Sweep/N, IBMAV/N, AVTK/N, LProt, NAV/N, Innoc 4.0+ Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Quartz virus was received in July, 1995. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Quartz is a memory resident infector of .COM and .EXE files, including COMMAND.COM. When the first Quartz 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 1,696 bytes. Interrupts 1C and 21 will be hooked by the virus. Once the Quartz virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM and .EXE files when they are executed. Infected files will have a file length increase of 1,420 to 1,426 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. No text strings are visible within the viral code. It is unknown what the Quartz virus may do besides replicate.