Literak Virus

Virus Name: Literak Aliases: V Status: Rare Discovered: July, 1994 Symptoms: .COM file growth; boot failures; decrease in total system & available free memory Origin: Unknown Eff Length: 936 Bytes Type Code: PRhCK - Parasitic Resident .COM Infector Detection Method: F-Prot, AVTK, IBMAV, ViruScan, Sweep, NAV, NAVDX, VAlert, AVTK/N, Sweep/N, NProt, IBMAV/N, NShld, NAV/N Removal Instructions: Delete infected programs General Comments: The Literak virus was received in July, 1994. Its origin or point of isolation is unknown. Literak is a memory resident infector of .COM files, including COMMAND.COM. When the first Literak infected program is executed, this virus will install itself at the top of system memory but below the 640K DOS boundary, not moving interrupt 12's return. Total system and available free memory, as indicated by the DOS CHKDSK program, will have decreased by 2,048 bytes. Interrupts 09, 1C, 21, and 24 will be hooked by the virus in memory. Once the Literak virus is memory resident, it will infect .COM programs when they are executed. Infected .COM files will have a file length increase of 936 bytes with the virus being located at the beginning of the file. The program's date and time in the DOS disk directory listing will not be altered. The following text string can be found within the viral code in all infected programs: "> LiTeRaK v1.0 <" If the Literak virus infects the boot copy of COMMAND.COM, the system will fail to boot.