First public release.



•  Disinfectant Version 1.0. March 19, 1989.



“Instructions” sections for more details.

document. See the description of the “About” button in the

With version 1.1 we now also distribute a formatted version of the



in the document. This “Version History” section is also new.

A few typographical, grammatical and other minor errors were corrected



Disinfectant can still be run under MultiFinder on 1 megabyte Macs.

“minimum” memory partition has been left set to 400K, so that

in version 1.0 to 700K in version 1.1 to accommodate these files. The

have increased the “preferred” MultiFinder memory partition from 400K

Disinfectant must load these resources to check them for viruses. We

We discovered that some applications use surprisingly large resources.



of the messages.

summary section referring you to the document for detailed explanations

If any error messages are issued in the report, a note is listed in the



“Error Messages” section of the document.

still be infected.” The new error messages are described in detail in the

is still infected,” “this file is probably still infected,” or “this file may

Depending on the type of error that occurs, we now report that “this file

Version 1.1 does a better job of reporting the different kinds of errors.

Many things can go wrong when attempting to repair an infected file.



less alarming. Thanks to Peter Johnston for reporting this problem.

the “damaged” error message to make it more accurate and somewhat

section of the document discussing this problem. We have also reworded

in its database files. We added a paragraph to the “Error Messages”

files are “damaged.” Reflex makes non-standard use of the resource fork

We received comments that Disinfectant reports that all Reflex database



Mohamed El Jazzar for reporting this problem.

states that the disk is too full to repair the file. Thanks to Ian Chai and

disk was full. Version 1.1 issues a better error message that explicitly

it repairs files. Version 1.0 issued an “unexpected” error message if the

Disinfectant requires at least a small amount of free space on a disk when



Thanks to William Pietri for reporting this problem.

present an alert describing the problem and we avoid damaging any files.

added a check for this special version of Vaccine. If it is detected, we

Disinfectant 1.0 in a rather disastrous fashion. In version 1.1 we have

developed for use at the University of Michigan and interferes with

We discovered that there is a special version of Vaccine which was



helping us solve it.

problem, and thanks to Chris Johnson, the author of GateKeeper, for

GateKeeper explicitly. Thanks to Dave Kormann for reporting this

depending on the circumstance. The alert and error message both mention

is detected, we either present an alert or issue an error message,

version 1.1 we have added special checks for these errors. If GateKeeper

list of privileged applications, you got “unexpected” error messages. In

repair infected files, and if you forgot to add Disinfectant to GateKeeper’s

If you ran version 1.0 on a GateKeeper-protected system in an attempt to



program. This problem has been fixed.

Finder, because we forgot to set the “bundle bit” when we shipped the

The initial release of version 1.0 did not properly display its icon in the



is present and issues an alert if it is missing.

in our testing of version 1.0. Version 1.1 checks to make certain that HFS

but it requires the hierarchical file system (“HFS”). We overlooked this

Disinfectant works on unenhanced 512K Macs with System 3.2 or later,



problem.

Brian Klass, Mohamed El Jazzar, and David Schultz for reporting this

states that the file is partially infected, but not contagious. Thanks to

cases, Disinfectant version 1.1 issues a special message which explicitly

virus-fighting tool which contained a bug. To avoid confusion in these

contagious. The partial infections were apparently the result of another

files sent to us were indeed partially infected, but not dangerous or

since Disinfectant uses stronger checks than most of the other tools. The

uninfected (e.g., Virus Rx 1.4a1 and Virus Detective). This is possible,

file is infected, even when other virus tools report that the file is

We received several reports that in some cases Disinfectant claims that a



to our attention.

and insufficient privileges errors. Thanks to Mike Brown for bringing this

production to scan them. This is the only way to avoid file busy errors

Note that in any case we still recommend that you take servers out of

an improved disk scanning algorithm in version 1.1 to avoid this problem.

Macintosh programs which scan disks. We have designed and implemented

This was not a “bug” in version 1.0—it is a problem shared by almost all

sometimes caused other files or folders to be skipped or scanned twice.

users created or deleted files or folders while a scan was in progress, it

Scanning an active server disk in version 1.0 was problematic. If other



Thanks to David Richardson for reporting this problem.

occurred, please try again.” This bug has been fixed in version 1.1.

circumstances it was possible to get an alert saying “a system error

When saving a report or the about box text in version 1.0, under certain



Rich Siegel for explaining the peculiarity in Lightspeed Pascal.

version 1.1. Thanks to Jon Schachter for reporting this problem, and to

reported that the file was “damaged.” This problem has been fixed in

properly detected the infection, but it repaired the file incorrectly and

Lightspeed Pascal, if such an application became infected, version 1.0

Due to a technical peculiarity in some applications developed with



and to Mark Anbinder for helping test the fix.

been fixed in version 1.1. Thanks to Jeff Multach for reporting the bug,

Version 1.0 did not work at all over TOPS networks. This problem has



helping find the bug. Thanks also to Rick Wong for helping.

format disks. Thanks to Brian Bechtel for reporting the problem and

bad bug, but fortunately quite rare, except on High Sierra and ISO 9660

Version 1.0 sometimes skipped entire folders while scanning. This was a



problem and helping diagnose it.

checking for damaged files. Thanks to Henry Norr for reporting this

put up its “out of memory” alert. Version 1.1 does a better job of

Some kinds of “damaged” files could cause version 1.0 to hang, bomb, or



for reporting the new virus and sending us a copy.

configured Disinfectant for this new virus. Thanks to Dr. Paul Corneillie

Yet another nVIR B clone named MEV# has appeared in Belgium. We have



•  Disinfectant Version 1.1. April 16, 1989.



There are several other minor changes and corrections in the document.



document.

virus-fighting programs in the “Other Virus Tools” section of the

We now mention, but do not review, the various commercial



“Special Features” section discussing this problem.

recognized by Disinfectant. We have added a new paragraph to the

programs usually write their backups in a special format which is not

produced by most of the various hard disk backup utility programs. These

Disinfectant cannot be used to check the backup floppy disks or tapes



March 2, 1988. Thanks to Robert Hammen for noticing this mistake.

was programmed to “wake up” on April 2, 1988. The correct date is

In the version 1.1 document we erroneously stated that the MacMag virus



section on ANTI in the document.

always causes no problems. The problem is discussed in more detail in the

to perfectly repair the damage. This damage is very minor, and almost

applications when it infects them in such a way that Disinfectant is unable

We have discovered a bug in the ANTI virus. ANTI slightly damages



repaired file.

that version 1.1 left a small amount of “wasted” disk space in the

1.1— both versions properly repair ANTI infections. The only difference is

they had been repaired with version 1.1. This was not a bug in version

applications repaired with version 1.2 are 1344 bytes smaller than if

makes a difference in the case of ANTI infections. ANTI-infected

Version 1.2 now “compacts” all files after repairing them. This only



up some of the code and documentation in the disk scanning module.

We made some improvements to the disk scanning algorithm and cleaned



us a copy.

Steve Kanefsky and Joel Benson for reporting the new virus and sending

Minnesota. We have configured Disinfectant for this new virus. Thanks to

Yet another nVIR B clone named nFLU was discovered at the University of



•  Disinfectant Version 1.2. August 4, 1989.



============

Version History