TMTM Virus

Virus Name: TMTM Aliases: Two Minutes To Midnight V Status: Rare Discovery: October, 1992 Symptoms: .COM file growth; file date/time changes; system hangs Origin: England Eff Length: 441 Bytes Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: ViruScan, AVTK, F-Prot, Sweep, IBMAV, PCScan, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, ChAV, NShld, Sweep/N, Innoc, NProt, AVTK/N, LProt, NAV/N, IBMAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The TMTM, or Two Minutes To Midnight, virus was received from Manchester, England in October, 1992. TMTM is a non-resident direct action infector of .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the TMTM virus is executed, this virus will infect one .COM program located in the current directory. A system hang may then occur. Infected programs will have a file length increase of 441 bytes with the virus being located at the end of the file. The file's time in the DOS disk directory listing will have been altered to 11:58p, or two minutes to midnight. One text string is encrypted within the viral code: "*.COM" System hangs frequently occur on infected systems.