This article was brought in Amiga User International March 91: Latest News on the Virus Front Unfortunately things look pretty grim right now. Our wonderful Amigas are being attacked by one evil virus after another; how it will all end, we dread to think. Gradually all Amiga owners have made acquaintance with up to several dif- ferent viruses; only six months ago the problem wasn't so serious and VirusX, for example, could cope. Today this otherwise good virus killer is obsolete....., for one reason it knowsfar too few viruses and can't be used for control on the harddisk which, these days, several people have. I have followed the virus problem for the past four years and it has gradually become my hobby to 'research' into various viruses...believe it or not. I must be one of the few people in the world who is pleased to meet a new virus. (Think at me next time you meet one....!) Yes, lots of you will say: "I can probably manage to 'wave' a new boot virus, if I find one;" but alas! today the situation is quite different. Now........a new Amiga virus comes up every week and, even worse, most of theme are non-boot viruses. Thus December 1990 was marked by no less than four of these, together with two new boot viruses. In other words, more viruses in a single month than we had in the whole three first years the Amiga came onto the market! In my view, this development will become pretty serious if we don't all do something to stop the spread, that is to say....it means YOU TOO! So what can one do? Yes, this time I won't go into more technical de- tails, but will just lay down some ground rules: 1. Always keep your disks write protected. If you need to write on the discs then turn off the Amiga for 60 seconds so that any possible viruses which could have sneaked into the memory will have gone. 2. An embarrassing topic, pirate copies, never swap games and the like with someone you don't know. Viruses flourish typically in school yards and the like amongst children and the young who only consider the Amiga as a fun games machine. Learn....... to say no thank you! 3. Once the accident has happened, don't despair but try to get hold of one of the newest virus killers which can often be found on our excellent Amiga BBS modem bases. I will mention another possibility later in this article. 4. If you download programmes by modem, ask the 'SYS OP' which virus kil- ler program it uses to ensure that the files on the base are virus free and, last but not least, which version. Not infrequently has the 'SYS OP' been asleep for the past hour. Avoid bases like that, especially if you have a hard disk. 5. If you are one of the fortunate owners of an Amiga 500 from and with revision 6 and after, or an Amiga 2000 type B, I strongly recommend you go and buy the new Super Fat Agnus (around £40), which nearly hinders all viruses from lying hidden in the memory and infecting the hard disk or other disks. In other words, when you do a normal reset (Amiga- Amiga-Ctrl) your machine will now make a 'cold reset' and.........whoosh, away with possible viruses. 6. If it so happens that it is a 'friend' who has made the virus, then go straight to the police, or to me. Kids like that aren't clever, good fri- ends but rather something else.... Think of Robert Morris in America, the man behind the RTM virus in the PC's. Now he owes society millions......a bottomless debt and a ruined life! But I don't have any sympathy for him, do you? Do you realise that there is a worldwide reward here in Denmark of now over $ 650 and I hope very soon $ 1000? for the names. Please con- tact me for more informations! Which virus killers can be recommended today? Ye, there's a lot of choi- ce, but a lot of junk amongst them - and that's both when we are talking about expensive commercial programmes, freeware or shareware programmes. What are freeware and shareware? Believe it or not....even Amiga people with years of experience don't know the difference today. The Amiga mar- ket has gradually become so 'corrupted' by pirate copies that everyone has gradually only got to know the concept' freeware'. I am definitely not hidebound by moral scruples - God forbid! But it is a pity that more people don't pay the tiny sum it costs to use a shareware program, typically it's only around $5 to $15, which I should think that everyone could afford. Even I have $30 to $100 in small notes to pay for shareware programs around the world. Look, this is one of the only ways of forcing down the prices of today's far, far too dear soft- ware! Particularly when it involves virus killers, would I recommend everyone to send the shareware expenditure because, by and large, the best virus killers today are shareware programs. Unfortunately it could easily stop, if the time and money the programs require are not appreciated by the rest of you. Now I am going to be tough: by 'the rest of you' I mean YOU! PERSONALLY! I spend around $150 per month in postage costs myself, on my virus work, just think about it! If we are going to have the chance to kill off the viruses, or limit their spread I think that there is only one way. That is to make it wor- th while for programmers to make virus killingprograms, and that they are continually updated. It is my experience that 'bought' programs aren't updated regularly or, if they are, not very often. I myself have been badly 'burnt' by several expensive virus killer programs which are defi- nitely not worth the money, such as Sherlock, Virusexpert and Virus In- fection Protection. The first mentioned was advertised as being able to get hold of 94 viru- ses....rubbish, it could only get 18. That is to say, pretty much the sa- me as VirusX (which is freeware). And as for the Virus Infection Protec- tion disk which I sent off to Discovery Software in America to get upda- ted, I haven't heard a peep from them, and that was 2 years ago! It's re- ally bad....just hang on to your cash. ----------------------------------- Of the virus killer programs which should be in the spotlight today, the following must be mentioned: 1. Zero virus III version 1.18, shareware price, as you like (min. $ 5 ?) This virus killer can now cope with around 86 boot viruses, but unfortu- nately only 4 non-boot viruses. It must be reckoned as one of the best because it has a 'learning function', so it can learn to recognise new boot viruses, as well as having a hard disk check against non-boot viru- ses, unfortunately without learning function here. An exllent killer! Can be obtained from the programmer: Jonathan Potter PO Box 289 Goodwood SA 5034 Australia 2. The Master Virus Killer version 2.1 , commercial. This virus killer knows now 105 viruses. The virus killer is being revised very fast ! Note that it is a commercial (bought) program in France, and german language contries in other countries shareware ($ 10) A good program but with some little bugs yet. Can be obtained from the purchaser: Stefan Ossowski Veronikastrasse 33 D-4300 Essen 1 West Germany Phone 02 01 78 87 78 3. KDV V version 2.04 1.15, commercial price $25. This virus killer is a must for busy people because the check routine, which checks for both boot and non-boot viruses runslike lightning.............. And it has one important detail, it has a fantastically good analysis routine which finds several unknown viruses. This version knows 61 viruses. But is up- dated when you read this to recognize over 100 different viruses. With it cone several virus tools of really good quality such as: 1. Hard disk virus brake which effectively prevents viruses from infect- ing your hard disk. 2. Background virus check, which keeps continual surveillance over stored media such as disks which are changed, RAM and so on. 3. Hard disk check for non-boot viruses. Can be obtained from the programmer: TUPsoft c/o Mike Hansel P.O. Box 1785 Seven Hills West NSW 2147 Australia 4. VScan 5.05c Shareware price $10 (In aid of children with rheumatism *) * The programmer is badly affected by rheumatism and is currently in hos- pital in Oslo. This virus killer is taken partly from the others,but it is a particular- ly good tool for the hard disk and BBS modem bases, where I reckon it is an absolute must. In its current form it can only be used from CLI, which I consider an advantage. The virus killer knows more than 100 viruses. Some good features: 1. Hard disk is checked for virus at the same time it is being checked for read/write errors, crunched files are indicated etc. 2. Protect mode which can hinder non-boot viruses being able to infect. 3. Brainfile mode which can check for changes in file sizes. 4. Analyse mode which can analyse and indicate new, unknown virus on hard disk or disks. 5. Has now been changed so that it can run with the new Kickstart 2.0! Can be obtained from the programmer: Arthur Hagen Johan Scharffensbergsvej 99, apt. 56 N-0694 0slo 6 Norway 5. Novirus version 3.47, commercial price 40 $. This virus killer works with turbo card , kickstart 2.0, or short to say everything . This virus killer knows now over 100 viruses . A very, very professional virus killer with a lot of features as: 1. Full surport for several harddisk devices and RAD. 2. Save and restore bootblocks. 3. A exellent analyse mode, which finds new viruses. 4. A disk repair mode for "not a Dos disk" , and for harddisk too (very important to salvage a harddisk infected by a boot virus) 5. A easy reading manual. Can be obtained from the programmer: Nic Wilson Nic Wilson Software 138 D South Street Toowoomba QL 4350 Australia 6. Watch out ! Virus-Control version 3.0 commercial is comming . A quite new different version than version 2.0 with many improvments is near to be released from your own Amiga Magazin. Some good advice if you are sending money to the above to get the latest new version, or the program itself, then send $5 more than the cost so as to cover post and packing, disk etc. And write that you have got the ad- dress from an article in our magazine, mention my name. Then you'll be sure of that extra bit of goodwill, because all of the programmers are friends of mine. No, no, no naughty thoughts..............I don't get any commission! On the contrary, we work together to hinder the spread of viruses and have formed a group which I have started of around 100 Amiga enthusiasts all over the world, who collect Amiga viruses. These viruses are then sent to known virus killer programmers who can more quickly and more ea- sily update the programs. Furthermore, our group works with universities in Israel, the USA and in Germany, whether the viruses are analysed and these results are sent to us and to various public institutions who work with data security. Erik Løvendahl Sørensen Snaphanevej 10 4720 Præstø Ph 00 45 53 792512 Modem Robotics HST, V 42, 38.400 Baud Everyone is of course welcome to send virus questions, new viruses, or suggestions for the next article about viruses to our mailbox, or to me. Next time I will be writing about harddisk and viruses, how to repair virus damaged disks, and what one can do if one has a really foul virus that no virus killer can handle.