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- xThe CDEF Virus
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- The CDEF virus was first discovered in Ithaca, New York, in August,
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- 1990. The same person who wrote the MDEF virus also wrote the CDEF
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- virus. See the description of the MDEF virus for details. The CDEF virus is
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- quite widespread.
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- CDEF is very similar to the WDEF virus. It only infects the invisible
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- “Desktop” files used by the Finder. It does not infect applications,
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- document files, or other system files. It spreads from disk to disk very
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- rapidly.
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- Fortunately, System 7 is completely immune to the CDEF virus.
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- Although the behavior of the CDEF virus is similar to that of the WDEF
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- virus, it is not a simple clone of WDEF. It is a completely different virus.
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- The virus does not intentionally try to do any damage. As with all
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- viruses, however, the CDEF virus is still dangerous. We have had many
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- reports of problems on CDEF-infected systems.
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- As with the WDEF virus, you can remove a CDEF infection from a disk by
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- rebuilding the desktop. See the “Problem Clinic” section for details.
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- The CDEF virus is named after the type of resource it uses to infect files.
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- CDEF resources are a normal part of the Macintosh operating system, so
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- you should not become alarmed if you see them with ResEdit or some
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- other tool. Any CDEF resource in a Finder Desktop file, however, is cause
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- for concern.
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- When using Disinfectant to repair CDEF infections under System 6, you
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- must use Finder instead of MultiFinder. Under MultiFinder, the Desktop
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- files are always “busy,” and Disinfectant is not able to repair them. If
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- you try to repair using MultiFinder, you will get an error message.
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- A new version of the CDEF virus was discovered in February, 1993.
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- There are only minor technical differences between the new version and
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- the original virus. Unfortunately, the new version escaped detection by
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- the Disinfectant version 2.9 protection INIT (but not by the application).
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- The Disinfectant version 3.0 INIT fixes this problem. In version 3.0, both
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- the INIT and the application recognize both the original virus and the new
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- version.
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- In addition to the known strain of CDEF, Disinfectant will also detect and
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- repair other strains which may exist but have not yet been reported. If an
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- unknown strain is detected, Disinfectant places the following message in
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- the report:
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- ### File infected by an unknown strain of CDEF
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