Schrunch-420 Virus

Virus Name: Schrunch-420 Aliases: V Status: Rare Discovered: April, 1993 Symptoms: .COM file growth; system hangs; display of garbled characters; may "schrunch" the system display Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 420 Bytes Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: AVTK, F-Prot, ViruScan, Sweep, ChAV, IBMAV, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, NShld, AVTK/N, Sweep/N, NAV/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, Innoc, LProt Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Schrunch-420 virus was submitted in April, 1993. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Schrunch-420 is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the Schrunch-420 virus is executed, this virus will infect up to six .COM programs located in the current directory. Infected programs will have a file length increase of 420 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 can be found within the viral code in all Schrunch-420 infected programs: "*.com" "- S C H R U N C H EM U P T I M E -" The Schrunch virus will occassionally display garbled characters on the system display and hang the system. It also attempts to "schrunch" or compress the system display, though this code doesn't work on the systems it was tested on. It will also return write protect errors when infected programs are executed from write protected diskettes.