Beetle Virus

Virus Name: Beetle Aliases: Beetle.1441 V Status: New Discovery: July, 1995 Symptoms: .COM file growth; decrease in available free memory Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 1,441 Bytes Type Code: PRhCK - Parasitic Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, Sweep, NAV, NAVDX, IBMAV, ViruScan, PCScan, ChAV, Sweep/N, AVTK/N, NAV/N, NShld, IBMAV/N, Innoc Removal Instructions: Delete infected files General Comments: The Beetle virus was received in July, 1995. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Beetle is a memory resident infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. When the first Beetle 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 1,488 bytes. Interrupts 08, 10, 16, and 21 will be hooked by the virus in memory. Once the Beetle virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM programs when they are executed. Infected .COM files will have a file length increase of 1,441 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 not be altered. The following text string is encrypted within the viral code: "Beetlejuice Terversion 2.0 by 'BIG V' , Magdeberg (D) Nov'92" It is unknown if Beetle does anything besides replicate.