Quintessence Virus

Virus Name: Quintessence Aliases: Quintessence.992 V Status: New Discovery: January, 1996 Symptoms: .COM file growth; system hangs; file date/tme changes Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 992 Bytes Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, IBMAV, NAV, NAVDX, ViruScan, ChAV, AVTK/N, IBMAV/N, NAV/N, NShld, Innoc Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Quintessence virus was received in January, 1996. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Quintessence is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the Quintessence virus is executed, this virus will infect one .COM file located in the current directory. Infected files will have a file length increase of 992 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 have been updated to the current system date and time when infection occurred. The following text string is visible within the viral code: "*.com" System hangs frequently occur when infected programs are executed. Once the boot copy of COMMAND.COM becomes infected, the system may fail to boot.