A Word From Patricia...
The Virus Information Summary List
in HyperText
Copyright (C) 1990-1997 by Patricia M. Hoffman.
All Rights Reserved.
The Virus Information Summary List, VSUM, represents the
cumulative knowledge produced by an ongoing research effort in
the detection, identification, and removal of MS-DOS viruses.
It will help you understand what a specific virus does, how it
activates, how it affects your system, and more important, how
to get rid of it!
The information in VSUM is accurate on the day of release;
however, its accuracy degrades rapidly by an amount proportional
to the elapsed time since release. Due to the extensive number
of researchers and because a virus will often end up with many
names, a VSUM release might have some short-lived flaws. Also,
a new variant of a documented virus will not necessarily have
characteristics identical to those of the original virus sample
which was analyzed.
Anti-viral products mentioned in HyperText VSUM are
shareware or commercial programs submitted by the vendor or
another party for VSUM Virus Scanning Product Certification,
a "no strings attached" evaluation. Products received for
certification by the 10th of the month are guaranteed of
inclusion in the current month's release of HyperText VSUM.
Products received after the 10th of the month may be included
in the current month's release, but due to timing, may not
appear until the following month's release. As of the June 1992
release of HyperText VSUM, only VSUM certified anti-viral
products have detection and/or removal information included.
Information on the VSUM Virus Scanning Product Certification
Program can be found in the Certifications sub-menu off of the
main menu. This menu also includes selections for certification
results for each month's HyperText VSUM release, as well as
vendor contact information for those vendors whose products have
participated in the VSUM Virus Scanning Product Certification
Program.
All anti-viral product testing is conducted with the
most recent version of the software provided. All testing is
performed against actual live viruses with the viruses non-
memory resident. My observed results might differ from those
results obtained with a different set of viruses and variants.
Users of all versions of Central Point Anti-Virus (DOS,
Windows, and NLM), as well as Microsoft Anti-Virus from DOS 6.0,
should be aware that if they have updated their software with the
July 27 or July 29, 1993 string updates, these anti-viral
programs will false alarm on the VALIDATE.COM program included
with all versions of HyperText VSUM. The VALIDATE.COM program
included with VSUM has been verified by both the NCSA and Fridrik
Skulason of Frisk Software as not being a virus or a trojan. The
VALIDATE.COM program will, however, delete itself from your
system on June 6, 2000. No other programs will be deleted by the
program and no system damage occurs. VALIDATE.COM as distributed
with HyperText VSUM, is perfectly safe to use, assuming the
distribution archive has not been altered.
Users of anti-viral products which contain "Heuristic"
scanning capabilities, such as Thunderbyte Anti-Virus (TBScan),
should be aware that these programs may indicate that VALIDATE
contains an unknown virus. These false positives occur due to
the code contained in the program to self-delete itself from
your system on June 6, 2000. Again, this program is not a virus
or a trojan, but contains this code as a security mechanism. In
the state it is distributed in unaltered distribution files of
HyperText VSUM, it will not harm your system.
A special thanks goes to the numerous individuals who have
offered their invaluable support, comments, and suggestions
which, after all, enhance the quality of VSUM!
Patricia M. Hoffman Telephone: 1-408-988-3773
3333 Bowers Ave Suite 130 Fax: 1-408-988-2438
Santa Clara, CA 95054 BBS: 1-408-244-0813 (HST)
USA Email: VSUM@IJS.COM