Quintessence Virus


 Virus Name:  Quintessence 
 Aliases:     Quintessence.992 
 V Status:    New 
 Discovery:   January, 1996 
 Symptoms:    .COM file growth; system hangs; file date/tme changes 
 Origin:      Unknown 
 Eff Length:  992 Bytes 
 Type Code:   PNCK - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector 
 Detection Method:  F-Prot, AVTK, IBMAV, NAV, NAVDX, ViruScan, ChAV, 
                    AVTK/N, IBMAV/N, NAV/N, NShld, Innoc 
 Removal Instructions:  Delete infected files 
 
 General Comments: 
       The Quintessence virus was received in January, 1996.  Its origin 
       or point of isolation is unknown.  Quintessence is a non-resident, 
       direct action infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. 
 
       When a program infected with the Quintessence virus is executed, 
       this virus will infect one .COM file located in the current 
       directory.  Infected files will have a file length increase of 992 
       bytes with the virus being located at the end of the file.  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 is visible within the viral 
       code: 
 
           "*.com" 
 
       System hangs frequently occur when infected programs are executed. 
       Once the boot copy of COMMAND.COM becomes infected, the system 
       may fail to boot. 

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