The virus spreads under both System 6 and System 7.



infected files can then spread the virus to other Macintoshes.

itself in various compaction, compression, and archive programs. These

Once present, the virus alters the Finder file and may insert copies of



affected system.

some pirated software. The software, when run, installs the virus on the

It appears that the virus was initially spread by an altered version of



run the Italian system.

strongly urge you to protect yourself against this virus even if you do not

running the Italian version of the Macintosh system (so far). However, we

The current strain of the INIT 9403 virus has been found only on Macs



completely erase the boot volume.

information on all connected hard drives (> 16 Mb) and attempts to

erase disks connected to the system. It attempts to destroy disk

After a certain number of other files have been infected, the virus will

Unlike most of the other Mac viruses, INIT 9403 is very destructive.



also sometimes called the “SysX” virus.

The INIT 9403 virus was discovered in Italy in March, 1994. This virus is




xThe INIT 9403 Virus