4Res Virus

Virus Name: 4Res Aliases: V Status: Rare Discovery: November, 1993 Symptoms: .COM & .EXE growth; system boot failure; system hangs Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 1,049 Bytes Type Code: PNAK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: AVTK, IBMAV, ViruScan, F-Prot, NAV, Sweep, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV, NProt, AVTK/N, NShld, Sweep/N, NAV/N, IBMAV/N, Innoc Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The 4Res virus was received in November, 1993. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. 4Res is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM and .EXE programs, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the 4Res virus is executed, this virus will infect one .COM or .EXE program located in the current directory. Programs infected with the 4Res virus will have a file length increase of 1,049 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 string can be found within the viral code in all infected programs: "4RESPATH=COMSPEC=*.COM *.EXE 4RES" System hangs frequently occur when infected .COM programs are executed. Additionally, once the boot copy of COMMAND.COM becomes infected, the system will fail to boot from the infected drive.