Inky Virus


 Virus Name:  Inky 
 Aliases:     Inky Ghost 
 V Status:    Rare 
 Discovery:   September, 1993 
 Symptoms:    Boot Sectors Altered; Boot Failure 
 Origin:      Unknown 
 Eff Length:  N/A 
 Type Code:   BR - Resident Diskette Boot Sector Infector 
 Detection Method:  ViruScan, AVTK, Sweep, F-Prot, IBMAV, VAlert, 
                    NAV, NAVBoot 
 Removal Instructions:  DOS SYS command on System Diskettes, M-Disk 
 General Comments: 
       The Inky, or Inky Ghost, virus was submitted in September, 1993, 
       and is one of three related viruses which all have names of 
       characters from the popular Pac-Man video game.  Inky is a memory 
       resident infector of diskette boot sectors.  It is "dropped" 
       by the  Blinky  virus, which is described in its own entry. 
 
       When the system user attempts to boot the system from a diskette 
       infected with the Inky virus, the Inky virus will be read into 
       memory, and the user will receive the following message on the 
       system display: 
 
               "Non-System disk or disk error. 
                Replace and press any key when ready..." 
 
       When the user replaces the diskette with an unwrite protected 
       diskette, the Inky virus will then be transferred to the diskette 
       boot sector on the newly inserted disk, and the system will fail 
       once again with the above message.  This process continues until 
       the user powers off the system and boots from a clean diskette, or 
       the system hard disk. 
 
       The Inky virus overwrites the disk boot sector located at Sector 0 
       when it infects a disk.  The original boot sector is not saved. 
       Infected boot sectors will contain the following text strings: 
 
               "[-Inky!-]" 
               "[INKY Ghost] by PacMan and Associates Inc." 
               "Non-System disk or disk error." 
               "Replace and press any key when ready..." 
 
       The Inky virus can be removed from system disks by performing the 
       DOS SYS command following a clean system boot.  On data, or non- 
       system diskettes, Sector 0 should be overwritten using a disk 
       editor, or the files on the disk copied to a new, uninfected diskette 
       and the infected disk reformatted.  Note that DOS 5+ users should 
       use the /U option to ensure the diskette is actually overwritten. 
 
       See:   Blinky   Pinky 

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