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:
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
“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)
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)