VIRUS-L Digest Thursday, 22 Dec 1988 Volume 1 : Issue 58 Today's Topics: Brain surviving warm boot (PC) RE: FORMAT command (PC) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Dec 88 8:50 EST From: Don Kazem Subject: Brain surviving warm boot (PC) I first brought up this issue about the Brain Virus being able to sustain itself even after a warm boot and it being able to write to a write protected disk. These were my findings and I posted them to the list. As far as I am concerned they were accurate. To do away with all the flames, I have requsitioned another dual floppy machine (the same as the one used in my first test). I will repeat the tests that yielded such controversial results and will post the results back to the list. Until then please hold on to your flames. Don Kazem National Academy of Sciences DKAZEM@NAS.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Dec 88 09:04 MST From: GORDON_A%CUBLDR@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU Subject: RE: FORMAT command (PC) To Homer re FORMAT...regarding your hard disk low level format, what kind of computer did you say you have? Did you say your computer supported a hard- disk? The DOS FORMAT command does NOT destroy data on the disk. It wipes out the FAT, which is kind of like the card catalog and releases all locations so that they can be written over. If you use NORTON utilities or something similar, you will see on a disk that had data on it and was FORMATted, that the items in the root directory can be listed, only with '?' in place of the first character. These items can then be restored, since the directory listing also gives the 1st sector or cluster location. If the files are contiguous they can be saved. All this means that a virus residing in the data area will not be erased, but it isn't safe either, unless other factors are implemented. I think that during the FORMAT, DOS will skip over areas deemed bad during the low level format. Presumably a virus could lock out these sectors so that they could be used for the virus's purposes. Allen ------------------------------ End of VIRUS-L Digest ********************* Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253