Mindless Virus

Virus Name: Mindless Aliases: V Status: Viron Discovered: November, 1992 Symptoms: .COM files overwritten; program corruption; hard disk corruption; data file corruption Origin: United States Eff Length: 423 Bytes Overwriting Type Code: ONCK - Overwriting Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: AVTK, ViruScan, F-Prot, IBMAV, Sweep, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, ChAV, NShld, Sweep/N, AVTK/N, LProt, NProt, IBMAV/N, Innoc, NAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Mindless virus was submitted in November, 1992. It is originally from the United States. The Mindless virus is a non-resident overwriting virus which infects .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the Mindless virus is executed, the Mindless virus will infect all of the .COM programs in the current directory. Infected programs will have the first 423 bytes of the host program overwritten with the viral code. The file will not increase in size unless it was originally smaller than 423 bytes, in which case it will become 423 bytes in size. The file's date and time in the DOS disk directory listing will not be altered. The following text string is visible within the viral code in Mindless infected programs: "*.c*" On Sundays, the Mindless virus activates when an infected program is executed. At this time, it will trash the current drive and the C: drive, overwriting the boot sectors and the beginning of the drive. The following text strings can be found in the boot sectors on the trashed drives: "[Youngsters Against McAffee] -NATAS KAUPAS" "The Mindless Virus v1.0" This text is encrypted within the viral code so it is not visible in infected programs. The Mindless virus will also corrupt data files which have a file extension starting with "C", infecting them as though they were .COM programs.