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- THE COMPUTER INCIDENT ADVISORY CAPABILITY
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- CIAC
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- INFORMATION BULLETIN
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- Information about the PC CYBORG (AIDS) trojan horse
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- December 19, 1989, 1600 PST Number A-10
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- There recently has been considerable attention in the news
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- media about a new trojan horse which advertises that it
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- provides information on the AIDS virus to users of IBM PC
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- computers and PC clones. Once it enters a system, the trojan
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- horse replaces AUTOEXEC.BAT, and may count the number of
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- times the infected system has booted until a criterion number
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- (90) is reached. At this point PC CYBORG hides directories,
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- and scrambles (encrypts) the names of all files on drive C:
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- There exists more than one version of this trojan horse, and
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- at least one version does not wait to damage drive C:, but
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- will hide directories and scramble file names upon the first
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- boot after the trojan horse is installed.
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- At first PC CYBORG was distributed only in Europe, although
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- several PC CYBORG infections have recently been reported in
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- the U.S. No DOE site has been affected yet, and the
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- probability of a widespread infection of this trojan horse
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- throughout DOE is extremely small. This trojan horse is
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- introduced into systems through a disk called the AIDS
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- Information Introductory Diskette, which has been mailed to a
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- mailing list which the author(s) of this trojan horse
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- obtained. PC CYBORG is a trojan horse, not a virus, and
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- thus is limited in ability to spread. This information
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- bulletin is being distributed in response to questions raised
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- because of the considerable media attention the trojan horse
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- has received, more than because of a genuine threat to
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- systems.
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- If you receive a disk in the mail which purports to provide
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- information on AIDS, do not load the disk into your computer.
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- Please save the disk, and contact CIAC immediately. If you
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- have already run this disk, please also call CIAC as soon as
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- possible. It is important to leave your PC on if it is
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- currently on, or leave it off if it is currently off.
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- Failure to do so may result in loss of your data, or make
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- recovery more difficult. CIAC has developed recovery
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- procedures, which are too lengthy to publish in this
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- bulletin.
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- For further information, including information about recovery
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- procedures, please contact CIAC:
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- Tom Longstaff
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- (415) 423-4416 or (FTS) 543-4416
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- FAX: (415) 294-5054
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- or send e-mail to: ciac@tiger.llnl.gov
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