Dot Killer Virus

Virus Name: Dot Killer Aliases: 944, Point Killer, Dot Eater V Status: Rare Discovered: October, 1990 Symptoms: .COM growth; removal of all dots (.) from display Origin: Koszalin, Poland Eff Length: 944 Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: ViruScan, AVTK, F-Prot, NAV, Sweep, IBMAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV, NShld, LProt, Sweep/N, Innoc, NProt, AVTK/N, NAV/N, IBMAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Dot Killer virus was isolated in Koszalin, Poland in October, 1990. It is a non-resident infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the Dot Killer virus is executed, the virus will infect one other .COM file in the current directory. Infected .COM files will increase in length by 944 bytes. The virus will be located at the end of infected files. While the Dot Killer virus contains code to attempt to avoid infecting the program pointed to by the COMSPEC environmental parameter, this logic contains a bug and does not function properly. If COMMAND.COM, or the program pointed to by COMSPEC, is located in the current directory it will become infected just like any other .COM program. When the Dot Killer virus activates, it will remove all dots (.) from the system display. Known variant(s) of Dot Killer are: Dot Killer B: Similar to Dot Killer, Dot Killer B's major difference is at activation. After booting from an infected COMMAND.COM, a happy face character will appear on the left side of the current screen line, then travel across the line to eat the period (.) the user attempted to type. After eating the period, the happy face will travel back across the screen and disappear until the user types another period.