Magician Virus

Virus Name: Magician Aliases: Keybug V Status: Rare Discovered: July, 1994 Symptoms: .COM & .EXE growth; decrease in total system & available free memory Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 980 - 996 Bytes Type Code: PRhAK - Parasitic Resident .COM & .EXE Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, IBMAV, AVTK, ViruScan, Sweep, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, AVTK/N, Sweep/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, NShld, NAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Magician virus was received in July, 1994. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Magician is a memory resident infector of .COM and .EXE files, including COMMAND.COM. When the first Magician infected program is executed, this 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 3,008 bytes. Interrupts 09 and 21 will be hooked by the virus in memory. Once the Magician virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM and .EXE files when they are executed. Infected .COM files will increase in size by 980 bytes with the virus being located at the beginning of the file. Infected .EXE files will increase in size by 980 to 996 bytes with the virus being located at the end of the file. The file's date and time in the DOS disk directory listing will not be altered. The following text strings are encrypted within the Magician viral code: "The Black Magician. Copyright (c) 1991" "KEYBUG from The Black Magician"