Bitten by the Monkey!
I had
read many articles about computer viruses, and, quite frankly, I paid
no serious attention to any of them. The vulnerability of my
company's PCs was not an issue as far as I was concerned. After all.
I used only "shrink-wrapped" software. Everything I loaded
was purchased from software companies and only in sealed boxes.
Pirated software is known to be one of the prime source of viruses,
and I don't use any of it.
Besides,
running the virus programs had never found anything anyway, and they
simply took too much time. I backed up my data regularly and wasn't
too concerned about the threat of a virus. Not until the day I tried
to boot the 486 PC with all my company's financial records from the
“A” drive, the floppy diskette drive, and got the message
'Invalid Drive Specification" instead of my customary "C>"
when I tried to switch to the
hard drive.
Out of
curiosity. I ran the virus checker. "Monkey-2 virus has been
detected" was the response. As the realization sank. in, my
initial reaction boiled over to outright anger! I had the virus
checker available but had never enabled it. What was this Monkey
virus going to do to my data? I had never even heard of the Monkey
virus. I had to determine what damage had been done and remove the
virus as quickly and as intelligently as possible.
I had
been told improper removal of an active virus can destroy the FAT, or
File Allocation Table. That in itself will make data impossible to
recover. I ran the virus program several times on both of my
company PCs with always the same result. Both PCs were infected with
the Monkey-2 virus. I purchased a new version of
McAfee's Virus Scan from among several available virus detection and
protection programs. After loading Virus Scan, it was
confirmed again, both computers had "Monkey-B",
as McAfee calls it. Again, the virus couldn't be removed!
I called McAfee's
technical support desk. After being switched four
times in less than two minutes, I had the right desk. and the bright
young woman on the phone had the right answers. "The Monkey
virus has been around since 1992." she said as she keyed her
PC's keyboard in the background, "I believe that one is from
Eastern Europe, maybe Bulgaria ... "
Thirty minutes later with
the help of Norton Utilities, both machines were clean. How did I get
the virus? It came from a diskette that accompanied an external modem
I purchased at my computer store. The virus was found on a "factory",
write-protected diskette. The modem company guaranteed me their
diskettes are shipped "clean". They suggested someone had
purchased one of their modems which. included the
software diskette, contaminated the diskette, then returned the modem
with I its software diskette to the store for a refund. I called the
store and asked their policy on returned components. If a unit
is returned new for other than defective reasons, the contents of the
box are checked for completeness. and the box is shrink wrapped again
and returned to the shelf. I now run the PC virus detection programs
on every boot on both PCs. I scan the boot records and changed
files. I scan both systems completely on a weekly basis. A little
paranoid? Perhaps, but once bitten...
George
Mindling ©
1999
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