Blinky Virus
Virus Name: Blinky
Aliases: Blinky Ghost
V Status: Rare
Discovery: September, 1993
Symptoms: .COM file growth;
interrupts 01 and 03 hooked in available free memory;
boot sector infection of Inky virus; boot failure
Origin: Unknown
Eff Length: 1,302 Bytes
Type Code: PRaCK - Parasitic Resident .COM Infector
Detection Method: F-Prot, NAV, ViruScan, IBMAV, AVTK, Sweep,
NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV,
NShld, NProt, Sweep/N, NAV/N, AVTK/N, IBMAV/N, LProt,
Innoc 4.0+
Removal Instructions: Delete infected files
General Comments:
The Blinky, or Blinky Ghost, virus was submitted in September, 1993,
and is one of three related viruses which all have names of
characters from the popular Pac-Man video game. Blinky is a memory
resident, direct action infector of .COM programs. It "drops" or
is the carrier of a boot sector virus, the Inky virus.
When the first Blinky infected program is executed, the virus will
install a portion of itself memory resident in available free memory,
hooking interrupts 01 and 03. This is an attempt by the virus to
avoid having debugger programs used against it. The virus then goes
on to infect programs as indicated below.
When a program infected with the Blinky virus is executed, this
virus will infect three .COM programs located in the current
directory. If COMMAND.COM is in this directory, it may become
infected. Programs infected with the Blinky virus will have a file
length increase of 1,302 bytes with the virus being located at the
beginning of the file. The program's date and time in the DOS disk
directory listing will not be altered. The following text strings
are visible within the viral code in all Blinky infected programs:
"[Blinky Ghost]"
"*.COM"
"????????COM"
"The Pac-Man BLINKY Ghost is watching."
"[-Inky!-]"
"[INKY Ghost] by PacMan and Associates Inc."
"Non-System disk or disk error."
"Replace and press any key when ready..."
The Blinky virus "drops", or is a carrier for the Inky boot sector
virus. The last four text messages above are from Inky. As the
Inky virus is actually a separate distinct virus, it will be
described in its own entry.
See: Inky Pinky