Hominy Virus
Virus Name: Hominy
Aliases:
V Status: Rare
Discovered: April, 1992
Symptoms: .COM file growth
Origin: Australia
Eff Length: 1,589 Bytes
Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector
Detection Method: ViruScan, F-Prot, Sweep, AVTK, NAV,
IBMAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV,
NShld, Sweep/N, LProt, Innoc, NProt, IBMAV/N,
AVTK/N, NAV/N
Removal Instructions: Delete infected files
General Comments:
The Hominy virus was submitted in April, 1992. It is originally from
Australia. Hominy is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM
programs, including COMMAND.COM.
When a program infected with the Hominy virus is executed, this
virus will infect one .COM program located in the current
directory. Infected programs will have a file length increase of
1,589 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. Infected programs can be identified manually
by checking to determine if the first three bytes of the program
match the last three bytes of the program.
The following text strings appear in the viral code in Hominy
infected programs:
"????????COM"
"*.COM"
"???????????"
"GAMES COM"
"RASTAN RJ"
"WORLDALC.DN1"
"ZEPFIGHT.MS3"
"*.*"
"\ S S\DR SS"
It is unknown what Hominy does besides replicate.
Known variant(s) of Hominy are:
Hominy-B: Functionally equivalent to the original Hominy virus,
the text strings in this variant have been changed to:
"????????COM"
"*.COM"
"???????????"
"CINACT.LOG P"
"CARTOONS.000"
"\ TRIP ARK"
Origin: Australia May, 1992.
See: Padded