Pirate Virus

Virus Name: Pirate Aliases: Lima V Status: Viron Discovered: September, 1991 Symptoms: .COM program corruption; system hangs Origin: Lisbon, Portugal Eff Length: 609 Bytes Type Code: ONCK - Overwriting Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: ViruScan, AVTK, Sweep, F-Prot, ChAV, NAV, IBMAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, NShld, LProt, Sweep/N, Innoc, NProt, AVTK/N, NAV/N, IBMAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Pirate virus was discovered in Lisbon, Portugal in September, 1991, by Pedro Lima. Pirate is a non-resident overwriting virus which infects .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. When a program infected with Pirate is executed, this virus will search the currect directory for an uninfected .COM file. When it finds an uninfected file, it will infect it, overwriting the first 609 bytes of the program. Programs infected with Pirate will only increase in size if their original file length was less than 609 bytes. If the original length was less than 609 bytes, then the file length will become 609 bytes. There will be no change in the file's date and time in the DOS disk directory. If Pirate does not find an .COM file to infect, it will continue searching the current directory until the user reboots the system. Attempts to boot the system from disks with a Pirate infected COMMAND.COM will result in a system hang. The following text string can be found in all programs infected with Pirate: "1989 / 1990 Software Pirates - Fast Serial - Portugal"