Perfume Virus

Alias:4711, 765
Strain:
detected when:---
where:---
Classification:Program virus, resident COM infector
Length:765 bytes added to COM files

Preconditions

Operating System(s):MS-DOS
Version/Release:2.0 and up
Computer model(s):Any IBM-compatibles
Caroname:Perfume.765.B

Attributes

Easy identification:Contains in one version the following strings: "G-VIRUS V2.0",0Ah,0Dh, "Bitte gebe den G-Virus Code ein : $" 0Ah,0Dh,"Tut mir Leid !",0Ah,0Dh,"$"; (trans- lated 2nd and 3rd strings: "please input G-virus code"; "sorry"); in another version there is a block of 88(dec) bytes that contain 00h.

Type of Infection:

The virus makes itself resident and intercepts INT 21 upon subfunction 4Bh (load+execute); virus TSR tries to infect the loaded file by appending itself to it. Infectable files have extension COM and are less than FC00h (64512d) bytes long.

Infection Technique:
Infection Trigger:Loading of a file triggers infection mechanism.
Storage Media affected:
Interrupts hooked:INT 21
Stealth:
Tunneling/Selfprot:
Oligo/Polymorphism:
Encoding Method:
Damage:A password is demanded after an infected file has been invoked more than 80 times. Initial message is the first string given above. If the given password is not "4711" (name of a well known German perfume), the virus will display the second message and terminate the program. In the hacked version of the virus, all messages have been zeroed out including the termination characters ("$") which causes the virus to output its code as text till the first $-character. Also the input buffer size for the password iterrogation has been zeroed which causes unpredictable results upon entry of too many characters.
Damage Trigger:
Particularities:Under a rare circumstance, the virus can produce a variant of itself which won't be able to identify itself and thus will infect a file more than once; this is one of several bugs in the virus.
Similarities:

Agents

Countermeasures:
Standard means:

Acknowledgements

Location:Micro-BIT Virus Center RZ Universitaet Karlsruhe
Classification by:Christoph Fischer
Documentation by:Christoph Fischer
Date:14-April-1990
Information Source:

(c) 1996 Virus-Test-Center, University of Hamburg