Ultra Virus

Virus Name: Ultra Aliases: Ultra.5700 V Status: In the wild Discovered: July, 1996 Symptoms: .COM & .EXE growth; DOS CHKDSK file allocation errors; decrease in available free memory Origin: India Eff Length: 5,700 Bytes Type Code: PRhAK - Parasitic Resident .COM & .EXE Infector Detection Method: AVTK, IBMAV, ViruScan, NAV, NAVDX, ChAV, Innoc, AVTK/N, IBMAV/N, NShld, NAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected Files General Comments: The Ultra virus was received in July, 1996, and is reported to be "in the wild". This virus appears to be from India. Ultra is a memory resident stealth virus which infects .COM and .EXE files, including COMMAND.COM. When the first Ultra infected program is executed, this virus will install itself memory resident at the top of system memory but below the 640K DOS boundary, not moving interrupt 12's return. Available free memory, as indicated by the DOS CHKDSK program from DOS 5.0, will have decreased by 6,720 bytes. Interrupts 21, 22, 2B, and 2C will be hooked by the virus in memory. Once the Ultra virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM files as well as .EXE files over 64K in size when they are executed. Infected files will have a file length increase of 5,700 bytes, though this file length increase will be hidden by the virus when it is memory resident. The virus will be located at the end of the file. The program's date and time in the DOS disk directory listing will not appear to be altered. The following text strings can be found within the viral code: "Ultra Violent S.T. - ONE (India)" "Created by V.S." "Since the beginning of time," "When from the big bang," "The mighty earth was born;" "Since that first cry of newborn man" "Amidst a brilliant dawn, twas proclaimed by the Talented Sadist Amidst great laughter, ridicule and scorn..." "That though a dark star may forever glow, Tis from light that light shalt dawn" "Quoted from the ST Book of Surrealistic madness - T.Sad, V.Sad & Sadistic T" "EXE COM C CPP ASM PAS FOR BAS COB CBL PRG DOC TXT LET WK1 WP PCX BMP TIF GIF XLS DBF WRI BAK SAM PM4 PM5 PAK WK3 XLC CDR FLI ARC ZIP DXF EPS FXP FRM DBT WMF CGM main()" "SEGMENT" "begin" "end." "Fortran Runtime Module Err" "10 END" "COBOL LINKE" "RETURN" "COMSPEC=" These text strings are not visible within infected files when the virus is memory resident as the virus disinfects programs as they are read into memory. The DOS CHKDSK program, when executed with the virus memory resident, will indicate file allocation errors on all infected files.