   ͻ
                    INFORMATION ON THE MICHELANGELO VIRUS                   
                                                                            
    The Michelangelo virus activates itself on March 6th, the anniversary   
    of Michelangelo's birth.  The Michelangelo virus is spread only by      
    floppy disks - not over networks or by connecting to electronic on      
    line services and bulletin boards.  The virus is transferred to memory  
    and hard disks when an attempt is made to start up (boot) your          
    computer from a floppy disk that is infected. The floppy does not have  
    to be a bootable floppy disk; it can be simply a floppy disk with data  
    files on it.  Once the virus is on the hard disk, it will infect every  
    floppy that you put in your computer, thereby creating further          
    infections that help it continue to spread.                             
                                                                            
    On March 6th, if the machine is infected when it is started, the virus  
    will be activated and will begin formatting the hard disk. This will    
    cause all data on the hard disk to be irretrievably destroyed.          
                                                                            
    The Norton AntiVirus Michelangelo Edition detects and removes the       
    Michelangelo virus, and will restore the hard disk partition table to   
    its original location.  Remember, however, that once the virus          
    activates, even though it can be removed after it activates, the        
    damage that it causes is unrecoverable.                                 
                                                                            
    The 10 most common DOS viruses are:                                     
                                                                            
    Stoned: The most common virus. Infects hard disk partition table and    
    floppy diskette boot sector.                                            
                                                                            
    Jerusalem-B:                                                            
    Activates on Friday the 13th.  The second most common virus.            
    Strain will delete any files executed on a Friday the 13th.  Can        
    cause enormous amount of file growth due to multiple infections.        
                                                                            
    Disk Killer :                                                           
    Activates after 48 hours of computer usage time.  Single most           
    destructive MS-DOS virus. It XORs the entire hard disk and              
    irrevocably destroys all data.                                          
                                                                            
    Frodo (4096):                                                           
    Activates on September 22.                                              
    This destructive memory-resident virus uses stealth technique on        
    cross-link files and may even corrupt data files.  On September         
    22, it activates and the system hangs.                                  
                                                                            
    Ping-Pong (Italian-A):                                                  
    An infector of boot sectors, activates on a (Ping Pong) random          
    basis, sending a 'pong-like' white ball bouncing around the             
    screen.                                                                 
                                                                            
    Joshi:                                                                  
    Activates on January 5th.  A stealth infector of floppy diskette        
    boot sector and hard disk partition tables. On January 5th, it          
    displays a message asking the user to type "Happy Birthday Joshi".      
                                                                            
    Michelangelo:  (see above)                                              
                                                                            
    Yankee Doodle:                                                          
    A memory-resident infector that plays "Yankee Doodle" at 5:00 PM        
    and increases the infected program size.                                
                                                                            
    Azusa:                                                                  
    This virus infects hard disk partition table and floppy diskette        
    boot sectors. It occasionally disables the LPT1 and COM1 ports. It      
    can also cause floppy drives to refuse to acknowledge that disks        
    have been swapped.                                                      
                                                                            
    Dark Avenger:                                                           
    Infects .COM, .EXE and .SYS files.  After every 16th file has been      
    infected, the virus overwrites a random sector of the hard disk         
    destroying programs and data files in that sector.                      
   ͹
    This information is from the read.me file of The Norton AntiVirus       
    Michelangelo Edition by Symantec Corporation - Peter Norton Group.      
                                                                            
    For recorded answers to frequently asked technical questions about      
    this free software and for additional information on the Michelangelo   
    virus, phone the Symantec Virus Newsline at 1-310-828-2906.             
   ͼ
