Italian Boy Virus

Virus Name: Italian Boy Aliases: 578, Ital Boy V Status: Rare Discovered: April, 1993 Symptoms: .COM file growth; hard disk corruption; Italian flag display; decrease in total system & available free memory Origin: Italy Eff Length: 578 Bytes Type Code: PRhCK - Parasitic Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: AVTK, ViruScan, F-Prot, IBMAV, Sweep, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV, NShld, AVTK/N, Sweep/N, NAV/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, Innoc, LProt Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Italian Boy virus was submitted in April, 1993, and is from Italy. Italian Boy is a memory resident infector of .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. It is a destructive virus. When the first Italian Boy virus is executed, the Italian Boy virus will install itself memory resident at the top of system memory but below the 640K DOS boundary, not moving interrupt 12's return. Total system and available free memory, as indicated by the DOS CHKDSK program, will have decreased by 896 bytes. Once the Italian Boy virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM programs when they are executed. Infected .COM programs will have a file length increase of 578 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 strings are visible within the viral code in all Italian Boy infected files: "ITALY IS THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD" "Fucks to Italian Virus Killers" The Italian Boy virus activates when it becomes memory resident on or after April 3rd of any year. At that time, the virus will draw an Italian flag on the system display, along with the above text message, and may trash the system hard disk.