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-
- Date: 12 Dec 90 14:51:41 -0500
- From: Ray Glath <76304.1407@CompuServe.COM>
- Subject: virus report (PC)
-
- BEIJING VIRUS (a.k.a. "Bloody" virus)
-
- December 7, 1990
-
- Copyright Raymond M. Glath, Sr.
- President
-
- RG Software Systems, Inc.
- 6900 E. Camelback Road, #630
- Scottsdale, AZ 85251
- (602) 423-8000
-
- New virus discovery.
-
- First reported appearance on a number of computers in the Civil
- Engineering Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- (M.I.T.) in Cambridge MA, USA.
-
- Mr. ( ) had been experiencing strange events with several systems.
- Running Vi-Spy showed that there was an un-explainable 2048 bytes of
- RAM that was "hidden" from DOS. Mr. ( ) used Vi-Spy to acquire
- the partition table and boot sector into a file which he then sent
- to RG Software Systems, Inc.'s Virus Analysis Lab (VAL) where the
- code was dis-assembled and analyzed. Within 24 hours after receipt
- of the virus sample, an identification pattern was developed and an
- updated "emergency release" of Vi- Spy was shipped overnight to Mr.
- ( ).
-
- Type of Virus: PC DOS Boot infector. Infects Partition Table (Master
- Boot Record) on hard disks as well. (Drive C:)
-
- Vector: 5 1/4" Diskettes only.
-
- Types of computers susceptible to infection: PC's and Compatibles
- with 640k or more RAM.
-
- Infection acquired by: Attempting to boot from an infected
- diskette, whether or not the diskette is "bootable".
-
- Symptoms: Available RAM size decreases by 2048 bytes. 3 1/2"
- diskettes become non-readable. Occasional "garbage characters"
- appear on screen. Diskettes that were "bootable" will no longer
- boot the system. 5 1/4" High Density diskettes may show "0 bytes in
- 1 hidden files" as a message from CHKDSK.
-
- Danger level: Considered to be a very dangerous virus in that it
- may cause damage to any diskette or hard disk due to bugs in the
- virus that can cause it to write to the FAT or the Root Directory.
-
- Naming convention used: This virus was named for the political
- statement it attempts to make. The following message is stored in
- encrypted form. Due to a bug in the virus' decryption routine, the
- actual message may be displayed as garbage characters.
-
- Encrypted message: "Bloody! Jun. 4, 1989"
-
- This is the date of the Chinese "Tianamen Square" confrontation
- between rebelling Students and the Chinese Army in Beijing.
-
- Technical Notes:
-
- 1. Trigger mechanism for message display: The first appearance of
- the message will be 1 - 128 system boots, then every 6 boots
- thereafter.
-
- 2. This virus attempts to save the original boot sector into another
- sector, however bugs can cause it to just replicate itself into both
- sectors. Thus no automatic clean-up can be reliably performed unless
- the original, un-infected Partition Table and Boot Sector are
- available to use in a replacement operation.
-
- There is no attempt made by the virus to determine what type of disk
- is in use, thus the damaging effects are produced due to its always
- writing to a fixed number of disk sectors, no matter what disk
- mapping is in effect.
-
- 3. The virus intercepts all diskette reads and writes where it
- checks for its infection through a comparison of the 1st 6 bytes of
- sector 1. If the disk is not infected, it adds itself to the disk.
-
- 4. Detection avoidance techniques used by the virus: When
- attempting to infect, if the write fails, it tries one additional
- time, and then aborts its infection attempt. Therefore the user
- doesn't notice a failure when the disk is write protected. Also,
- the virus bypasses DOS completely when intercepting diskette reads
- and writes. Thus, a program that monitors system interrupts will not
- see the activity of this virus.
-
- *************************** more ********************************
-
- Note: Since this report has been completed, the Beijing virus has
- also turned up in another department at M.I.T. and has
- simultaneously appeared at the City University of London.
-
- This is the first time we've noticed a Boot Sector virus appearing
- simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to speculation
- that multiple persons were involved in its release.
-
- Researchers in the U.K. have named this the "Bloody" virus.
-
- With the timing of this virus' release, there is an improved
- opportunity for it to spread, through students' carrying infected
- diskettes home for the holidays.
-
- To help protect his privacy, the name of the individual at M.I.T.
- has been removed from this report.
-
- ----------------------------- more ----------------------------
-
- Date: 13 Dec. 1990
- From: Padgett Peterson <padgett%tccslr.dnet@uvs1.orl.mmc.com>
- Subject: Bloody/Beijing Virus (PC)
-
- Since Mr. Glath neglected to include a signature string in his
- VALERT posting, enclosed is a 16 byte id stringthat a user put on
- HOMEBASE for use with John's SCAN v71 /ext switch:
-
- 37 55 7b 78 78 73 6e 36 37 5d 62 79 39 37 23 3b
-
- I have not seen the virus so cannot attest to the string's validity
- but at least it is more than nothing. If someone has seen the virus
- please confirm/deny this string's effectiveness.
-
- Padgett
-
- -
-
- Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 17:20:18 +0700
- From: swimmer@rzsun3.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Morton Swimmer)
- Subject: Bloody (PC)
-
- The "Bloody" virus has just hit Germany. (The virus was described
- before.) It was reported to us at our information stand at the
- CeBit 1991 by a firm from Darmstadt. It is fairly stupid, or so it
- seems, as it doesn't even maintain a minimal boot record. It
- therefore creates all sorts of wierd mistakes and causes floppy
- disks to become unusable.
-
- Cheers, Morton
-
-
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