MiniMax Virus

Virus Name: MiniMax Aliases: V Status: Rare Discovered: February, 1993 Symptoms: .COM file growth; file date/time changes Origin: USSR Eff Length: Up to 31,125 Bytes Type Code: PNC - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: Sweep, AVTK, F-Prot, IBMAV, ViruScan, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, ChAV, Sweep/N, NShld, AVTK/N, NAV/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, Innoc Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The MiniMax virus was submitted in February, 1993, and originally is from the USSR. MiniMax is a non-resident, direct action infector of .COM programs, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with the MiniMax virus is executed, the MiniMax virus will infect one .COM program located in the current directory, and then the host program the user was attempting to execute will run. Programs infected with the MiniMax virus will become 31,125 bytes in length with the virus being located at the end of the file. The actual MiniMax viral code is quite small, and most of the file length increase will comprise hex C3 characters. The program's date and time in the DOS disk directory listing will have been updated to the current system date and time when infection occurred. The following text string can be found within the viral code: "*.com" MiniMax doesn't appear to do anything besides replicate.