Lythyum Virus

Virus Name: Lythyum Aliases: V Status: Rare Discovered: January, 1993 Symptoms: .COM file growth; hidden file in disk root directory Origin: United States Eff Length: 502 Bytes Type Code: PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, ViruScan, Sweep, AVTK, IBMAV, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV, LProt, NShld, Sweep/N, AVTK/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, NAV/N, Innoc Removal Instructions: Delete infected programs General Comments: The Lythyum virus was submitted in January, 1993, and is from the United States. Lythyum is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. It was written by a member of the Virulent Graffiti virus writing group. When a program infected with they Lythyum virus is executed, the Lythyum virus will infect one .COM program located in the current directory. Infected programs will have a file length increase of 502 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 encrypted within the Lythyum virus' code in infected programs: "lythyum, the attitude adjuster, ViRuLeNT GRaFFiTi" "\Lythyum.hi! *.COM" Once the virus has infected all of the .COM files in the current directory, it will create a hidden file, LYTHYUM.HI!, in the current drive's root directory when the next infected program is executed. The hidden file will contain the first text string indicated above. Known variant(s) of Lythyum are: Lythyum-B: Functionally similar to the Lythyum virus described above, Lythyum-B is a very minor variant. Origin: United States January, 1993.