Operation
The virus added itself to the system in a way which defied normal infection processes. Because of this, it was able to infect a system without using system subroutines, which is what most antivirus products were watching. This is why the virus received the additional name 'stealth'. The infection process used a mathematical algorithm to determine the letters E-X-E & C-O-M. When a file was opened by the OS, the virus checked the extension of the file, and sometimes, other extension letters would be identified as a program file causing the virus to infect a data file and obviously corrupting its contents.
Because the virus appended itself to a file, while hiding the increase in file length, the system could cross-link files and diagnostics on the disks would report allocation errors. This would damage programs and data alike. The description of the problems found while trying correct the 'stupid-looking errors' would cause most computer professionals to erase the system and start over. A few days later the problems would arise again. Diagnostic disks and installation disks used to fix the computer would commonly be infected with the virus and this would aid in the spread.
Read more about this topic: 4K (computer Virus)
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)