Sirius Virus
Virus Name: Sirius
Aliases: Sirius.400, Hello, Hello.400
V Status: New
Discovered: July, 1995
Symptoms: .COM file growth; file date/time seconds = "06"
Origin: Unknown
Eff Length: 400 Bytes
Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector
Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, VAlert, ViruScan, Sweep, NAVDX, NAV,
IBMAV, PCScan, ChAV,
NShld, Sweep/N, NAV/N, IBMAV/N, AVTK/N, NProt, Innoc 4.0+
Removal Instructions: Delete infected files
General Comments:
The Sirius, Sirius.400, or Hello.400, virus was received in July,
1995, along with one variant, Sirius.720. Their origin or point of
isolation is unknown. Sirius is a non-resident, direct action
infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM.
When a program infected with the Sirius virus is executed, this
virus will infect one .COM file located in the current directory
on the C: drive. It does not infect files located on other drives.
Programs infected with the Sirius virus will have a file length
of 400 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 appear to be altered, though the seconds field will have been
set to a value of "06". The following text string is encrypted
within the viral code:
"DK*.COM << Ebbelwoi >> by (›)SiRiUS 10-93 D-63225B"
It is unknown what the Sirius virus does besides replicate.
Known variant(s) of Sirius are:
Sirius.720: Also received in July, 1995, Sirius.720 or Hello.720
is a 720 byte variant of the Sirius virus described above. It
infects one .COM file located in the current directory when an
infected program is executed, provided that the current directory
is not a root directory of any drive. Programs infected with
this variant will have a file length increase of 720 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 appear
to be altered, though the seconds field will have been set to
"06". The following text strings are encrypted within the viral
code:
"*.CoM t* * \"
"<> EBBELWOI v33m BY (›)SiRiUS 12-93 D-63225 IAMQVE OPVS EXEGI
QVOD NEC IOVIS IRA NEC IGNIS NEC POTERIT FERRVM NEC EDAX
ABOLERE VETVSTAS 9"
Origin: Unknown July, 1995.
Sirius.1068: Also received in July, 1995, this is a 1,068 byte
memory resident variant of the Sirius virus described above. It
becomes memory resident at the top of system memory but below
the 640K DOS boundary, hooking interrupt 21. Available free
memory, as indicated by the DOS CHKDSK program from DOS 5.0,
will have decreased by 5,376 bytes. Once resident, it infects
.COM files when they are executed. Infected .COM files will
have a file length increase of 1,068 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 appear to be altered,
though the seconds field will have been set to "06". The
following text string is encrypted within the viral code:
"[EBBELWOI] Version QUX-7 3/94 Sirius"
This variant attempts to hide the file length increase when
the virus is memory resident, however due to a bug within the
viral code, most infected files will appear to have a 24 byte
reduction in size when the virus is memory resident. Some
.COM files will hang the system when infected by the virus.
Origin: Unknown July, 1995.