Christmas Tree Virus

Virus Name: Christmas Tree Aliases: Tannenbaum, XA1, 1539 V Status: Endangered Discovery: March, 1990 Symptoms: .COM file growth; display; master boot sector destruction Origin: Germany Eff Length: 1,539 Bytes Type Code: PNCX - Parasitic Non-Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: ViruScan, NAV, AVTK, F-Prot, Sweep, ChAV, IBMAV, NAVDX, VAlert, PCScan, NShld, LProt, Sweep/N, Innoc, NProt, AVTK/N, NAV/N, IBMAV/N Removal Instructions: NAV, or delete infected files General Comments: The Christmas Tree, or XA1, virus was first isolated in March 1990 by Christoff Fischer of West Germany. This virus is an encrypting virus which will only infect .COM files. On April 1st of any year, the Christmas Tree virus will activate, destroying the master boot sector (partition table) of infected hard disks the first time an infected program is executed. During the period from December 24th until January 1st of any year, when an infected program is executed, the virus will display a full screen picture of a christmas tree.