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- Documentation for AVSearch 2.21 (well sort of)
- What - another virus search program? From West Germany? Do they
- have computers over there? Yes, we have and we've viri too.
-
-
- I've seen too much misinformation of the users in the past on
- both sides of the ocean. Either through the press (that's what I
- call the 'hyper dyper gamma virus', or straight misinformation
- (the virus survives in CMOS, the virus will write to a protected
- diskette or the virus is using a modem subcarrier).
-
- AT FIRST. DON'T PANIC just in case you were hit. Based on my
- expirience, it is much more likely that you'll have another
- hardware/program error than a virus.
-
- This program is a night time quick hack of our programmer,
- Detlev Hoppenrath and me some time ago. We stripped down the
- removing parts of our main and comercial virus remover 'ANTIVIR'
- and played around with the user interface. While it has some
- bugs, I think I can live with it and so can you can live with
- the bugs, too. This is in no way a polished program and
- documentation (BTW, I do have to say thanks to the ASP, I get
- the dIsclaimer section from there - have YOU paid for your
- shareware programs?), so I think it will not meet ASP standards.
-
- This program searches for known virus strings within programs or
- supplied file names. I'm using the word search here, trying to avoid
- the word s..n, since ... well that's another story. I would like
- to say thank you to Rob Rosenberger, for encouraging me to place
- this program on CI$, Ross M. Greenberg for his marvelous
- Flu_Shot program (Have you registered your copy?) and everybody
- else placing/sharing programs and ideas onto CI$. I'm learning
- every day! (If CI$ wasn't so expensive from abroad, even with
- the European access). Special thanks to Mr. King of the
- commandline and the other cohorts from BProgA and PCVENB,
- section 6. Turbo has become much easier with their help.
-
- AVSearch will recognize a couple of viri, and some more than
- other programs, while some other programs may recognize other
- viri. As far as I know, there are five or six new virus
- currently in the works. We're updating our comercial program
- first and MAYBE later this program. You need DOS 3.0! and about
- 120 KB of free memory. Start this program by typing it's name
- with '/H' as the parameter on the command line. If you ever have
- to put more than one parameter on the command line, please don't
- forget to put a space between the parameters. Our command line
- parsing is not powerful and not foolproof.
-
- If you would like to check your whole drive c: AVS c:\ /s. This
- will test your .COM .EXE .SYS and some more files. AVSearch will
- give the number of viri found back in the errorlevel. An
- Errorlevel of 255 is given back on an internal error.
-
-
- AVSearch does not work on networks, since it crashed mine.
- AVSearch is checking for networks and refuses to run. The
- AVSCrc program performs a self check, as AVSearch, and computes
- four different CRC's. You may give one filename as a file to be
- CRCed, don't use wildcards.
-
- If you really like, you can send me a copy of your virus, if
- AVSearch found one. I'm happy to see if our main program
- 'ANTIVIR' can remove it! If AVSearch does not recognize your
- virus, please send or eplex me the file anyway. I can send you
- an update to this program, if you would like.
-
- What are the VIRCOM.COM and VIREXE.EXE files doing. They are my
- 'Jump Files'. These two files are simply do nothing files. Some
- viri won't jump on small files, so I created some medium sized
- files to let a virus 'jump' on it. And, given a file size for
- 10000 Bytes, it's easy to calculate the virus length. If you
- would like to send me a boot sector virus, you should use debug
- to save the boot sector data into a file. If the virus is on
- your hard disk, please format a system disk in drive a:. The
- virus is now on the freshly formatted disk.
-
-
- debug bootsec.vir
- ; debug will probably say file not found
- l 100 0 0 1 ; loads first three sectors of disk in A:
- r cx ; display content of cx
- :200 ; and modify it
- w ; write back to file
- q ; quit debug
-
- Send me that file!
-
- (Happy U.S. for this disclaimer - we're not allowed to have
- something like this in West Germany)
- DISCLAIMER - AGREEMENT
-
- Users of AVSearch must accept this disclaimer of warranty:
- "AVSearch is supplied as is. The authors disclaims all
- warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation,
- the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any
- purpose. The authors assumes no liability for damages, direct
- or consequential, which may result from the use of AVSearch."
-
- AVSearch is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge
- to the user for evaluation. And well, the evaluation period is
- almost undefinite for this revision of AVSearch, since we don't
- want to make any money from (yet, maybe later). Feel free to
- share it with your friends, but please do not give it away
- altered or as part of another system. The essence of
- "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users
- with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide
- incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products.
-
- You are encouraged to pass a copy of AVSearch along to your
- friends for evaluation. This program and support files may not
- be distributed within Europe without the written consense from
- the author from 'Shareware vendors'. Some gave this program away
- in a self extracting file - and I got the calls when this file
- WAS infected.
-
-
- Ah, final note, if I've done some errors, typos, wrong
- translation or put some other errors into this package, and I'm
- sure I have, don't be angry. English is only my second language.
- And througout this text I'm using the word VIRUS when it may be
- a trojan horse.
-
- Have a nice day, happy haunting and may the anti virus force be with you!
-
-
-
- Tjark Auerbach
- H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH
- Olgastr. 4
- D-7992 Tettnang
- West Germany
-
-
- CI$: 71310,3143
- BIX: (I don't use it, they don't have TAPCIS over there)
- FAX: ++49 7542 52510
- TEL: ++49 7542 6353 (Please speak slowly, we're not perfect)
- BBS: ++49 7542 52110 (maybe some time in March 90)
-
- Known bugs:
- Yes, there are some. We will work on AVSearch on an as available
- basis, if activity on ANTIVIR and new products is low! But
- please report bugs and suggestions to me. Really, even ANTIVIR
- has become (ADVERTISMENT) one of Germany's best anti virus tool.
-
- - User screen colors are not saved and restored on exit.
-
- - Memory routine may sometimes find its own serach strings, that's
- a dinner bell!
-
- - Your bug, please report to me, thank you.
-
-
- Additions to 2.18 (EII)
-
- Added /B Parameter - Batch mode. n this mode AVSearch will work
- without any user action and give back errorlevel
-
- Modified /E Parameter - Extended mode. In this mode, all known
- virus strings are compared against the specified files. This
- means, that you're testing signatures of boot sector viri or
- memory viri against normal program files. This may lead to false
- alarms in case of boot sector signatures in program files. If
- you get a virus warning with /E enabled and no warning without,
- then it is probably NO VIRUS.
-
- Background: We gave a public domain version of AVSearch to a
- virus-special magazine in Germany. The /E parameter wasn't fully
- documented in this version of AVSearch (VirSuch). We got a
- couple of telephone calls.
-
- Added /BW Parameter - Black & White mode. Useful for my laptop.
-
-
- Additions to 2.19
-
- New viri added
-
-
- Additions to 2.20
-
- New viri added, most of them from the Eastern Block countries.
- We've also added a memory check for some viruses which requires
- us to do so. AVSearch is still not sold and recognises 135
- different virus strains, not counting the similarities within
- the strains.
-
-
- Additions to 2.21
- New viri added, AVSearch will now recognize 144 different virus strains
-
-
- Additions to 2.22
- New viri added, AVSearch will now recognize 158 different virus strains
-
-
- Additions to 2.23
- Small improvment due to a production error in the serialized
- German version. AVSearch will show production date in header now.
-
-