Psychogenius Virus

Virus Name: Psychogenius Aliases: Cover Girl, Psycho V Status: Viron Discovery: December, 1991 Symptoms: program & data files corrupted; file date/time changes; boot failure Origin: United States Eff Length: 723 Bytes Type Code: ONAK - Overwriting Non-Resident Program & Data File Infector Detection Method: ViruScan, AVTK, Sweep, F-Prot, ChAV, NAV, IBMAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, NShld, Sweep/N, Innoc, NProt, AVTK/N, NAV/N, LProt, IBMAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Psychogenius, or Cover Girl, virus was received in December, 1991 from a United States source. Psychogenius is a non-resident direct action overwriting virus which infects any executable or non- executable file. It permanently corrupts any files it infects. When a program infected with Psychogenius is executed, it will infect all files which exist in the current directory. It does not care if the files are executable, or if they are data files of some sort. Infected files will have had the first 723 bytes overwritten by the viral code, and their date and time updated to the system date and time when infection occurred. There will be no change in file length if the file's original length was 723 bytes or larger. Files which were originally smaller than 723 bytes will now be 723 bytes in length. The following text strings can be found in the viral code in all infected files: "Oh, oh, oh, She's my cover girl, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Cover Girl by The New Kids On The Block Hangin' Tough (c) 1988 CBS Records" "Written by" "(Psychogenius) 12/28/91" "NKOTB JORDON" It is not possible to disinfect infected files as the first 723 bytes have been overwritten. Files should be deleted and restored from a clean backup copy. Known variant(s) of Psychogenius are: Psychogenius-B: Functionally equivalent to the original virus, this variant has one byte which differs from the original. Origin: Unknown May, 1992.