Hacker Chronicles 1/HACKER1.ISO/misc/v05i115.txt

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-27 | 37KB

From:       Kenneth R. van Wyk (The Moderator) <[e-mail]>
Errors-To: [e-mail]
To:       [e-mail]
Path:      cert.sei.cmu.edu!krvw
Subject:   VIRUS-L Digest V5 #115
Reply-To:  [e-mail]
--------
VIRUS-L Digest   Wednesday, 10 Jun 1992    Volume 5 : Issue 115

Today's Topics:

help me .. is this a virus? (PC)
F-PROT & DR-DOS 6.0 (PC)
Help for a new(unknown) virus (PC)
Virus or hard disk problems ? (PC)
Troi Two information (PC)
"Wonder-2" False Alarms in NAV 2.0 update 4 (PC)
SCAN vs. CLIPPER 5.0 (PC)
Re: Zipped Viruses (PC)
Re: VD virus (PC)
Detecting the MtE (PC)
ISPNews & Virx (PC)
Virus Discovery (PC)
HyperCard anti-virus solution available (Mac)
Notes on ANSI bombs (various)
Re: Taxonomy of viruses
An apparent case of deliberate punitive virus-spreading
Re: what's this .signature stuff?
uploads to risc.ua.edu (PC)
New files on eugene (PC) (Mac)
Colds and Flu season... (Humor!)

VIRUS-L is a moderated, digested mail forum for discussing computer
virus issues; comp.virus is a non-digested Usenet counterpart.
Discussions are not limited to any one hardware/software platform -
diversity is welcomed.  Contributions should be relevant, concise,
polite, etc.  (The complete set of posting guidelines is available by
FTP on cert.sei.cmu.edu or upon request.) Please sign submissions with
your real name.  Send contributions to [e-mail]
(that's equivalent to VIRUS-L at LEHIIBM1 for you BITNET folks).
Information on accessing anti-virus, documentation, and back-issue
archives is distributed periodically on the list.  A FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions) document and all of the back-issues are available by
anonymous FTP on cert.org (192.88.209.5).  Administrative mail
(comments, suggestions, and so forth) should be sent to me at:
<[e-mail]>.

   Ken van Wyk

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 02 Jun 92 16:06:25 -0500
From:    [e-mail]
Subject: help me .. is this a virus? (PC)

>I boot up the machine and it appears to run fine through the boot up
>until I type in a command and hit return.  It doesnt matter what the
>command is. Every time it does this:
>
>B:
>A:
>A:cd\
>A:win

Hmmm, we had someone call in with this problem during the Michalengo
event.  Is your machine a new Gateway?  His was.  The new Gateways
have highly programmable keyboards.  Somehow he put his keyboard
into "Record" mode and assigned all subsequent keystrokes to
his Enter key.  He accidentally recorded his installation of
F-PROT.

Even after power off, and booting from a DOS diskette, every time
he pressed his Enter key, it played back the keystrokes he
accidentally recorded.  Since it kept on attempting to re-install
F-PROT, he swore that F-PROT had a virus. :-)

If you have a Gateway clone, check your manual and find out how
to "de-program" your keys!

- [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 03 Jun 92 07:12:33 -0500
From:    "Dr. Martin Erdelen" <[e-mail]>
Subject: F-PROT & DR-DOS 6.0 (PC)

Good morning (Central European Summertime) everybody,

here are two questions concerning F-PROT:

1) What does the message "invalid program" mean?

2) Several users reported problems when trying to run VIRSTOP (v. 2.01) under
DR-DOS v. 6.0.

Apparently, VIRSTOP.EXE can *not* be installed by
   - DEVICE= ...   in CONFIG.SYS
   - HIDEVICE= ... in same
   - INSTALL ... in AUTOEXEC.BAT
   - HIINSTALL ... in same
   - HILOAD ...    in same

VIRSTOP *can* be installed by simple command in AUTOEXEC.BAT, but then is
reported to use up over 52 KB of memory. Can't be true, can it?

(I don't have DR-DOS here & don't know it much, so I can only pass this on.)

I am wondering why I have never seen this mentioned on VIRUS-L - after all,
DR-DOS isn't that rare. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for any info.

Humidly (to paraphrase one of our highly esteemed gurus ;-) ),
MArtin

    (~  , ,
   (___/__/__-_
Dr. Martin Erdelen     EARN/BITNET: [e-mail]
- -Computing Centre-        Internet: erdelen at hrz.uni-essen.de
University of Essen           Tel.: [phone]
 Schuetzenbahn 70              FAX: [phone]
  D-4300 Essen 1            Binary: .  .-.  -..  .  .-..  .  --      (~~
      Germany                                                    (()~~
+-----------------------+    Smoke:       ())))   ((()))~~~ ())~~~
|      Remarkably       |               ())))) ~~~
|      remarkless       |        (())()~(())())
|         room          |     (())())
+-----------------------+   ((()()())))
Acknowledge-To: <HRZ090@DE0HRZ1A>

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 03 Jun 92 07:13:38 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Course account)
Subject: Help for a new(unknown) virus (PC)

Could any one help me detect/clean/remove the virus(name still
unknown), whose characteristics are listed below :

1. File or Boot Sector virus
2. Attaches to EXE or COM programs
3. Increases filesize by 3K
4. Corrupts FAT of hardisks and floppies
5. Makes starting cluster of all EXE and COM programs in FAT the same
6. Can't be detected by SCAN 4.5B66, or Findvir(ver 4.2), CPAV(ver 1) or NAV
7. Mostly likely doesnot remain  in memory
8. Activated by running infected files.
9. Probable name of the virus is 'Made in India' (Wild Guess).

I don't have any other tools to detect this virus.

Thanks in advance, for any help.

Dinesh Vardhan

Please reply on
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 03 Jun 92 17:54:46 -0400
From:    [e-mail] (Alan Gilbertson)
Subject: Virus or hard disk problems ? (PC)

Sunday May 31 1992, unx.sas.com![e-mail] (Andy Ravenna) writes:

 AR> First I ran "Qaplus" which came with my Gateway, and the DMA testing
 AR> on the Main Components menu seemed to freeze up.  Does this mean the
 AR> DMA chip has gone bad ?

 AR> Secondly, I ran Norton Disk Doctor II and when Norton got to the last
 AR> 55% of my 80 meg hard drive, it started marking every sector as "BAD".

 AR> I did run a virus check on the system and nothing was found.

 AR> HELP !   Does this sound like a virus problem or a hardware problem ?

This sounds exactly like a wrong CMOS setting (too few cylinders) for
a hard disk, such as an IDE drive, using translations in the
controller.  This particular problem can produce some of the weirdest,
off-the-wall, and in many cases apparently disrelated symptoms on a
PC.  The clue is that Norton suddenly began finding every sector bad
past a certain point.

Check your CMOS hard drive setting and compare it with what your drive
requires.  Hopefully, you can correct this and clear up the trouble.

Alan
- --
Internet: [e-mail]
UUCP: ...!uunet!myrddin!tct!psycho!230!Alan.Gilbertson
Note:psycho is a free gateway between Usenet & Fidonet. For info write to
     [e-mail].

------------------------------

Date:    04 Jun 92 11:24:16 -0400
From:    "Tarkan Yetiser" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Troi Two information (PC)

   Hello,

   We have received a sample of a virus named Troi Two from Australia.
   Mr. Brian Marriott isolated the virus and reported to Virus-L
   previously.
   Neither SCAN 91, nor F-PROT 2.03 recognizes the virus. If you add the
   following signature to F-PROT, make sure you are using SECURE scan, or
   it will miss it; just an observation.
   A quick analysis (using DIS86 by Mr. James R. Van Zandt, SIMTEL-20
   archives, /msdos/disasm/dis86212.zip, highly recommended) revealed the
   following characteristics of the virus:

   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Suggested Name:  Troi Two
   Date/Location :  May 1992, Australia by Mr. Brian Marriott
   Targets       :  EXE files by appending and modifying CS:IP in header
   RU-there call :
                    mov  AH, 0FCh
                    int  21h
                    cmp  AH, 55h
                    jz   virus_is_active_in_mem

     *In English :  The virus adds a service to DOS Int 21h to determine if
                    it is already resident in memory. The virus interrupt
                    handler responds by setting AH to 55 hex.

   Scan String   :  B8 64 02 FA A3 84 00 8C 1E 86 00 FB EB B9 9C 80 FC FC
                    75 04 B4 55 9D CF

   Operation     : Troi Two is a 512-byte non-stealth EXE file infector.
                   When an infected program is run, the virus checks the
                   DOS date (2Ah/21h) to see if it is before May 1, 1992.
                   If not, it will issue an RU-there call (see above) to
                   determine if it is already installed in memory.
                   Otherwise, it will copy itself to the upper half of the
                   interrupt vector table (thus not taking up any
                   "memory").
                   After that, it will hook Int 21h by storing the original
                   handler address within itself (offsets 0291 & 0293),
                   and changing the IVT entry to its own handler [0264].
                   Since the RU-there call is skipped if the date is before
                   May 1, 1992, the second time the virus runs, the
                   original
                   Int 21h handler address is lost, freezing the system.
                   Once the virus is resident in memory, it monitors Int
                   21h LOAD/EXEC (4B00) requests, and checks the extension
                   of programs for EXE. If a victim is found, it will also
                   check to see if the program is already infected by
                   looking at the INVERTED-CHECKSUM field (offset 12h) of
                   EXE header, and comparing it to 3254h. If not equal,
                   then it assumes the program is not infected yet, and
                   proceeds with infection. Infection is done using DOS
                   handle-oriented file access. It also attempts to
                   preserve the file attribute.

  Comments      :  The way it copies itself to the upper half of the IVT,
                   and hooks Int 21h, as well as the RU-there call, and a
                   bug "fix" (5700/21h <--> 0101/21h) suggests the virus
                   writer has seen Troi-1, which is a COM infector.
                   DOS 5.0 systems will experience immediate system lockup,
                   and the virus will not be able to spread, though it
                   infects PC/DOS 3.3 systems as long as the date is set
                   to after May 1, 1992.
                   The following text string can be found inside the virus:

                      >>>-Troi Two-->

Regards,

Tarkan Yetiser
VDS Advanced Research Group               P.O. Box 9393
[phone]                            Baltimore, MD 21228
e-mail:  [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 10:14:13 -0400
From:    [e-mail] (Matthew J. D'Errico)
Subject: "Wonder-2" False Alarms in NAV 2.0 update 4 (PC)

Hi, all...

I thought I'd pass along the essence of a growing thread from
compuserve in which some false alarms have been caused by Norton
Anti-Virus' latest update (04) for version 2.0 which was released on
June 1st...

Several instances have been reported where this update reported
infections of the "Wonder-2" strain of the "Wonder" virus in
commercially distributed software...  These infections include files
from :

    Borland C++ 3.0 (TOUCH.COM)
    Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 2.0
    Stacker 2.0
    VCD.COM (from VCD.ZIP - shareware ?)
    Intermission 3.0 (IMSETUP.COM)
    SHEZ v7.1 (3 different files : SHEZCFG.COM, SGREG.COM and DUMPMAC.COM)

That's the list as of last night...  In at least 3 of these cases, the
authors or companies involved have verified the files as correct, and
thus not infected...  Naturally, this infomation has been passed along
to SYMANTEC.
- -- Matt
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
|    Matthew J. D'Errico    | DOMAIN:    [e-mail]    |
| Magna Software Corporation    | uucp:        uunet!magna!mderrico    |
|     275 Seventh Avenue    | CompuServe:    70744,3405        |
|     20th Floor        +---------------------------------------+
|    New York, NY   10001    |    Voice    : 212 / 727 - 6737    |
|        USA            |    Fax    : 212 / 691 - 1968    |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 20:32:16 +0700
From:    Cezar Cichocki <[e-mail]>
Subject: SCAN vs. CLIPPER 5.0 (PC)

Hi!

Over installing CLIPPER 5.0 I ( of course ) ran SCAN with /AG option
for immunization. Immunized CLIPPER said me : 'Rules not found in file
CLIPPER.EXE', and didn't work corectly.

When I reinstalling CLIPPER, all was right. I repeat it few times, and
my conclusion is : adding generic code to CLIPPER.EXE make it unusable
( of course I can add rules manualy, but it is funny idea, is'n it ?)

Cezar Cichocki
System operator

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 11:26:06 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Michael W. Burden)
Subject: Re: Zipped Viruses (PC)

[e-mail] (Magnus Olsson) writes:

>[e-mail] writes:

>[...]

>>Here's what happens: Your virus scanner is infected with a stealth,
>>fast infecting virus.  It isn't currently active.  You run the scanner,
>>telling it to scan your entire hard drive.  First the virus gets control:
>>It goes resident, takes over, then runs the scanner.  Now the scanner
>>attempts to perform a self-check on its file.  This detects nothing,
>>because the virus disinfects the file as it reads it.  Now your scanner
>>goes through your entire hard drive, reading all programs.  Not only
>>does it have no chance of catching the virus in any program, but every
>>program (even ones which weren't infected before) will get infected!!!

>At least McAfee's scanner doesn't only check files on the disk and
>make a self-check, but also scans memory for viruses before doing
>anything else. Doesn't this cure the above problem, as the
>memory-resident stealth virus would be detected in memory?

Even better yet:  Make sure you get a clean copy of your anti-virus
tools BEFORE you get infected, put them on a floppy, write protect
it, and NEVER run these programs from the hard disk.

- --
+----------------------------------------------------+------------------------+
|"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...|       Mike Burden      |
|   only MUCH better!"        -Laurie Anderson       |sharkey!wybbs.mi.org!mwb|
+----------------------------------------------------+------------------------+


------------------------------

Date:    05 Jun 92 14:54:15 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Vesselin Bontchev)
Subject: Re: VD virus (PC)

[e-mail] (Michael Blackwell) writes:

> Has anyone heard of a virus called VD, scan string [FD] ?

> Scan90 picked it up the other day. Scan89, virex (april ver), and Norten Anti
> Virus report nothing. Neither does the docs for scan, or the april Vsum.

Hmm, seems that SCAN 91 causes a false positive about this virus
sometimes... We also got a report for it yesterday - in one file only
and a file that the user has not touched for years...

Regards,
Vesselin
- --
Vesselin Vladimirov Bontchev           Virus Test Center, University of Hamburg
Tel.:[phone], Fax: [phone]       Fachbereich Informatik - AGN
** PGP public key available by finger. **     Vogt-Koelln-Strasse 30, rm. 107 C
e-mail: [e-mail]     D-2000 Hamburg 54, Germany

------------------------------

Date:    05 Jun 92 14:58:39 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Vesselin Bontchev)
Subject: Detecting the MtE (PC)

Hello, everybody!

I received a fax of something that looks like a bulletin issued by
McAfee Associates. I discussed the problem with them and they said
that it is not their; maybe some of their agents has published it. If
this is the case, I would suggest them to pick their agents more
carefully... Anyway, here is the bulletin:

- ---------cut here----------
The Virus Test Center at the University of Hamburg just released the
results of their test of McAfee Associates Viruscan V89B, and Dr.
Solomon's FindVirus (version 4.15 including drivers from May 15th,
1992) against 9,468 different viruses spawned by the Dark Avenger
Mutating Engine:

FindVirus failed to detect 744 of the viruses; Viruscan detected all
but 4 of the viruses.

Although we continue to strive for perfection (100%), we are
gratified that our detection tools offer our users 99.95%
effectiveness against this threat at this time.

******************  End of Bulletin #0020  ************************
- ---------cut here----------

The above is a clear misrepresentation of my results with marketing
purposes.

1) They "forgot" to mention the results of F-Prot (13 missed variants)
which is the most serious competitor of SCAN - it is a much, much
cheaper scanner, with slightly better detection rate in general, and
with MUCH better disinfection capabilities.

2) They even got their arithmetic wrong - it would be 99.96%... :-)

3) I my message on Virus-L/comp.virus I clearly stated that ALL the
three scanners tested FAILED the test. SCAN failed, F-Prot failed,
FidnVirus failed. Period. When we speak about detecting known viruses
in general, a detection rate of 90 % and higher is acceptable. When
are speaking about detecting a particular virus, the arithmetic is
boolean - you either detect it (in its ALL instances), or you don't.
SCAN 89-B DOESN'T detect the MtE, F-Prot 2.03a DOESN'T detect the MtE,
FindVirus 4.15 DOESN'T detect the MtE. Both me and Dr. Fred Cohen
clearly explained in our messages why anything less than 100 %
detection of a particular virus cannot be acceptable.

Meanwhile the missed variants have been sent to McAfee Associates and
Fridrik Skulason (the variants missed by the other programs are too
many to permit their sending by e-mail). Let's hope that the newer
versions of their programs will detect this virus. Meanwhile SCAN 91
still DOESN'T detect the MtE.

Those of the readers of Virus-L/comp.virus who have access to bulletin
board systems and FidoNet are invited to distribute this message
widely, with the hope to reduce the damage caused by the bulletin
quoted above.

OK, that was the silly stuff, now back to business.

We did the same MtE-detection tests with a few other programs. Here
are the results.

Virex 2.3 missed 664 variants out of 9469. Conclusion: Virex DOESN'T
detect the MtE-based viruses.

We received an update of FindVirus - this time the version is 4.19
with drivers of June 3, 1992. Results: it missed only 1 variant this
time. Conclusion: FindVirus still DOESN'T detect the MtE-based viruses
reliably, but at least Dr. Solomon is working to improve the product.
A side note for those who are not familiar with this program. It is
part of Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus ToolKit, produced by S & S
International. The latest version of the ToolKit is 5.56. The
different programs in the ToolKit have different version numbers.
Particularly, version 4.19 of FindVirus might not be shipped to the
regular users yet. We accepted to test it because of the seriousness
of the problem - we wanted to report the latest results in this area.

We received UTScan version 23.00.12. UTScan is the scanner part of an
integrity-oriented product, called V-Analyst III. The product is
distributed in the USA under the name The Untouchable by Fifth
Generation Systems. The user interface in this product is slightly
different than the one in the European version, but otherwise the
product is functionally equivalent. The version of the scanner that I
received for review was clearly designed for the American version of
the product.

Results: UTScan detected ALL instances of the virus. Conclusion:
UTScan DOES detect the MtE-based viruses ACCORDING TO OUR TESTS (that
is, if it misses some, we were unable to prove this).

Since this was the first scanner which detected all instances of the
virus, I was so excited that I ran the scanner on our full virus
collection. The results were very good, although nothing exciting - it
missed about 160 different virus variants (out of about 1,300), which
scores slightly worse than McAfee's SCAN 89-B. However, this is a
- -huge- improvement relatively to the previous version I have seen
(22), which had a less than 50 % detection rate.

The virus identification capabilities of the product were very bad -
it was able to recognize the exact variant only slightly better than
SCAN - which means almost never. Therefore, my conclusion is that it
is a good product to be used for initial scanning of your system, in
order to determine whether it is infected (by anything) or not - prior
to install the integrity checking part of the package. However, do not
rely on it for exact virus identification.

The last product received was an MtE-only detection program. It is
produced by Digital Dispatch Inc. and is supposed to be included in
the program VirHunt, version of June 8. The author of the program told
me that he has done a full analysis of the MtE and his detection is
algorithmical and based on his knowledge of what MtE is able to
generate. I don't know what UTScan does; all the other programs seem
to use some kind of heuristics.

Results: the program detected ALL the 9,469 mutations of the virus.
Conclusion: The program DOES detected the MtE-based viruses, according
to our tests.

OK, that was all for now, if more MtE-detectors appear, we'll test
them too and I'll keep you informed.

Regards,
Vesselin
- --
Vesselin Vladimirov Bontchev           Virus Test Center, University of Hamburg
Tel.:[phone], Fax: [phone]       Fachbereich Informatik - AGN
** PGP public key available by finger. **     Vogt-Koelln-Strasse 30, rm. 107 C
e-mail: [e-mail]     D-2000 Hamburg 54, Germany

------------------------------

Date:    05 Jun 92 12:12:46 -0400
From:    "Ross M. Greenberg" <[e-mail]>
Subject: ISPNews & Virx (PC)

>Date:    02 Jun 92 11:40:57 +0000
>From:    [e-mail] (Vesselin Bontchev)
>Subject: Re: ISPNews and why 100% is the only good enough solution (PC)

>BTW, recently it was announced that the new version of VirX (2.3) is
>able to detect the MtE-based viruses. BEWARE! In my -very- preliminary
>tests, it missed 7 out of 27 Fear mutations! Don't use this scanner
>for detecting MtE-based viruses! It is unreliable!!!

That's what last-minute-before-the-release fiddling will getcha, alas.
We recently became aware of this, dangitall, and a new release that
catches 10,000 out of 10,000 of our test viruses will be released very
shortly.

Ross

- ------------------------------

>Date:    01 Jun 92 16:56:10 +0000
>From:    [e-mail] (Vesselin Bontchev)
>Subject: Re: VIRx version 2.3 released (PC)

>[e-mail] (C. Glenn Jordan -- Virex-PC Development Team) writes:

>>    2.  VIRx now detects all files encrypted with the "Mutating Engine"
>>    attributed to the Dark Avenger that are not already destroyed by the
>>    Engine's attempts to encrypt them (and most of those, as well).

>This requires a bit of clarification. No files are "destroyed by the
>Engine's attempts to encrypt them". However, the MtE sometimes (a bit
>too often, IMHO) generates something that I call a "zero-key
>decryptor". It does not encrypt the body of the virus and generates a
>decryptor which essentially does nothing else than juggling a few
>constants around some registers. No attempt to perform decryption is
>present in these cases.

>The files are not destroyed - they work perfectly and are able to
>spread the virus. However, since the decryptor is almost non-existent,
>it is very difficult to detect it... :-)

I dunno, Vessilin: some of the above mentioned 10,000 viruses seem to
trash the productivity of the target file pretty nicely: after the
decryptor comes a whole bunch of NOP's, followed immediately by a
return.  The target program is never run, as an exit back to DOS seems
to preclude that pretty well.

Ross

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 05 Jun 92 14:14:03 -0400
From:    [e-mail] (Vedat Gunay)
Subject: Virus Discovery (PC)

Unknown MS-DOS Based Virus found on the West Georgia College Campus

The virus infects COM and EXE files.

It is not detected by:

        McAfee Scan v8.3B86
        F-Prot v2.03A Quick Scan or Secure Scan
        Virusafe 2.43

It is detected by:

        F-Prot v2.03A Heuristic Scan which reports

                "This program seems to contain a memory-resident virus,
                 which infects other programs when they are executed."

Infected files have larger file sizes.  The problem was first detected when
certain application no longer ran. Windows 3.0 dies with a memory protection
error before the program finishes loading.  Once the virus is in memory it
attaches itself to any programs that are executed.  Most programs however
still run correctly after the virus has attached itself.

The F-Prot scan of memory does not initially detect the virus if it is
already resident, but during a heuristic scan the following message may
appear:
                "Alert!  An active "stealth" virus has been found in
                 memory.  You should reboot the computer from a "clean"
                 system diskette.

It has either lain dormant on our campus and just activated itself (which I
do not believe is the case), or it spreads very fast!  If users have write
permission on fileservers in locations where EXE and COM files exist, the
virus can spread through the network.

At the moment we are deleting any files that are suspect and replacing them
with clean copies.  We still do not have a name, or any way to disinfect.

Any information regarding what we might have, and how we can get rid of it
would be greatly appreciated.
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott W. Hughes
[e-mail]
West Georgia College
Computer Center
[phone]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 19:13:47 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Michael Kerner)
Subject: HyperCard anti-virus solution available (Mac)

This has already been posted in comp.sys.mac.hypercard so here's the
deal:

I am making available in a limited beta release, a HyperCard
anti-virus product that is available by EMAILing me a message.  I have
not been able to override the protection even by SENDing "SET THE
SCRIPT..." to Hypercard

Mikey.
Mac Admin        WSOM CSG - CWRU        /     TRW Inc. - Corporate HQ
   Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear
          no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 02 Jun 92 15:35:13 -0400
From:    [e-mail] (A. Padgett Peterson)
Subject: Notes on ANSI bombs (various)

    Since there has been quite a bit of discussion lately
about ANSI bombs, I just thought that a few footnotes might be in
order.

    First, if an ANSI driver is in use, you cannot trust any
program that does unfiltered screen writes to display a file since
lines may be overwritten. The DOS utilities TYPE and MORE are two of
these.

    Filtering word processors such as EDLIN (I know, some people
do not consider EDLIN a word processor) or viewers such as LIST will
either suppress the ESCAPE character (hex 1B) or translate it to a
displayable sequence (usu. either a carat-bracket "^[" or left arrow
(PC extended character set translation of hex 1b)).

    One problem in determining if an ANSI driver is in use is that
it may not be labeled as such. Though ANSI.SYS comes with DOS, third
party drivers such as DANSI, FANSI, DVANSI, etc. also exist and may
not be so obvious. Years ago I wrote an ANSI derivative that could
accomodate over 1k of keyboard redirection (most ANSI drivers only
have space for about 100 bytes) to apermit a menuing system that used
all forty function keys (f1-f10, alt_f1-f10, etc.) to provide single
keystroke application launching. For some reason I called it
"Padgett.Sys".

    Keep in mind that it does not have to be a .SYS driver to work
either. There is no reason an ANSI program could not load after DOS so
long as it intercepts and processes all screen display commands (Int 10).

    As I have mentioned before, all that is necessary to protect from
malicious keyboard redirection is to "fix" the ANSI driver to change
the key mapping function terminator from "p" to"something else" since there
are a number of good features found in ANSI (try "prompt=$e[37;44m$p$g" if
you have a colour display and are tired of white on black).

    In DOS 5.0 ANSI.SYS this is located at DEBUG offset 161h. Just
change the 70h ("p") to something unused by other ANSI commands. Since
there are a number of these, and the virus/trojan/bomb must get it
right the first time, it is a reasonable defense and any of the above
attempting a remap will just display its command on the screen (if
ANSI does not recognize the escape sequence, it will release it to the
screen instead of trapping it). What you would see in this case is a
bracket "[" folowed by a string of garbage, followed by a lower case
"p". If returns (hex 0D) are part of the sequence, the string may
partly overwrite itself.

    If in doubt, examine the file with DEBUG. A dump will not only
reveal the full string but also the leading hex 1b (escape).

                Warmly,
                    Padgett

------------------------------

Date:    03 Jun 92 09:46:35 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Fridrik Skulason)
Subject: Re: Taxonomy of viruses

[e-mail] (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:

>Disadvantages:  Distance algorithms were designed under the assumption
>that changes take place one at a time and at random (as in mutation of
>DNA).  Computer viruses more likely change in blocks.  Two viruses may
>be very distant bitwise because a payload message has been changed, or
>the order of certain operations is different, even though they are
>otherwise identical.  I think this method is especially likely to fail
>with polymorphic viruses.

Well, not necessarily.  If the polymorphic code is just a decryption block,
you simply decrypt the virus, and apply the distance alorithm to the
decrypted portion.  Actually, this applies to all encrypted viruses, not just
the polymorphic ones.

>On the whole, I think distance may work well with very closely related
>viruses, but will probably fall apart with more distantly related
>viruses (and is hopeless with unrelated ones, of course).

This has been my experience too - I have found it very useful in determining
the relationship among Jerusalem variants, for example.

>2.  Parsimony methods.  Viruses can be hand-scored for the presence or
>absence of various features--file types infected, stealth, encoding,
>polymorphism, file destruction, etc.

Stealth, encoding and polymorphism are features that get often added to
later versions of viruses, as viruses belonging to the same family generally
grow in complexity as time passes.  These features are not really useful for
classification.  Types of files infected, TSR or not, how the virus allocates
memory and other such features are a lot less likely to change...

- -frisk

------------------------------

Date:    04 Jun 92 14:41:56 +0000
From:    [e-mail]
Subject: An apparent case of deliberate punitive virus-spreading

Part of article 'How they get your number', page 21, 'Daily Telegraph'
(by Eric Bailey, additional reporting by Hugh Davies) (British
newspaper, editorial address = 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London
E14 5DT, England)

[long description of techniques, some using computers, of
reprogramming in-car phones to run charging the calls to someone
else's account, and other ways of defrauding the telephone system]

[First sentence of last paragraph:-] But manufacturers are fighting
back: tampering with the chips of some new models corrupts both the
chip and the phone, and lodges a nasty <virus> in whatever computer
has been used.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 13:06:00 -0800
From:    "[e-mail]"@BIIVAX.DP.BECKMAN.COM
Subject: Re: what's this .signature stuff?

[e-mail] (Todd Hedenstrom) writes:

>I'm sorry if this is in a FAQ somewhere I haven't been able to find,
>but this is starting to nag at me -

>I keep seeing a line on messages here on the net that says something
>like 'Hi, I'm a virus - copy me to your .signature file' or something
>like that.  What the heck is that?

>I just saw the same line, only this time the message was in German.

I've been using it lately.  IMHO, it's a joke.  It does meet the definition
of a virus, except it spreads only with active intervention by people.

>>>Ich bin ein Virus.  Mach' mit und kopiere mich in Deine .signature. <<<
- --
Arthur L. Rubin: [e-mail] (work) Beckman Instruments/Brea
[e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] (personal)
My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.
Our news system is unstable; if you want to be sure I see a post, mail it.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 08:19:09 -0500
From:    James Ford <[e-mail]>
Subject: uploads to risc.ua.edu (PC)

The following files hav been placed on risc.ua.edu for anonymous FTP in
the directory /pub/ibm-antivirus:

        virx25.zip   -  Ross M. Greenberg's Virex
      vsig9205.zip   -  May 1992 VIRSCAN.DAT file for TBSCAN/HTSCAN
      asig9206.zip   -  "Forgotten" additions to VIRSCAN.DAT file
       scanv91.zip   -  McAfee's VirusScan v91
       clean91.zip   -  McAfee's CleanUp v91
       vshld91.zip   -  McAfee's VirusShield
     netscn91b.zip   -  McAfee's VirusScan v91 (for networks)

- ----------
By the time you realize what love can do, the damage has already been done.
- ----------
James Ford -  Consultant II, Seebeck Computer Center
              The University of Alabama (in Tuscaloosa, Alabama)
              [e-mail], [e-mail]
              Work [phone]  fax [phone]

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 04 Jun 92 13:13:51 -0500
From:    [e-mail] (John Perry)
Subject: New files on eugene (PC) (Mac)

Hello Everyone!

    The following files have been added to the anti-viral/security
archives on eugene.gal.utexas.edu (129.109.9.21) If you have any
problems, please send e-mail to [e-mail].

Disinfectant-2.8.hqx (MAC)
Virx23.zip (PC)
Asig9206.zip (PC)
Vsig9205.zip (PC)
Netscn91.zip (PC)
Scanv91.zip (PC)
Vshld91.zip (PC)

Clean91.zip was not added due to the fact that Clean91b.zip will be
available shortly.

- --

John Perry - [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date:    05 Jun 92 08:30:03 +0000
From:    [e-mail] (Douglas McCorison)
Subject: Colds and Flu season... (Humor!)

[Moderator's note: This is forwarded from the rec.humor.funny newsgroup]

Original from my wife and I...

How do you tell which computer on the network has a virus?

  ....It's the one with a stuffed up node.
- --
Selected by Brad Templeton.  MAIL your joke (jokes ONLY) to [e-mail]
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible.  A Daemon will auto-reply.

Jokes ABOUT major current events should be sent to [e-mail]
(ie. jokes which won't be funny if not given immediate attention.)
Anything that is not a joke submission goes to [e-mail]

------------------------------

End of VIRUS-L Digest [Volume 5 Issue 115]
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