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1989-08-04
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First public release.
ΓÇó Disinfectant Version 1.0. March 19, 1989.
ΓÇ£InstructionsΓÇ¥ sections for more details.
document. See the description of the ΓÇ£AboutΓÇ¥ button in the
With version 1.1 we now also distribute a formatted version of the
in the document. This ΓÇ£Version HistoryΓÇ¥ 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.
ΓÇ£minimumΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£preferredΓÇ¥ 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
ΓÇ£Error MessagesΓÇ¥ section of the document.
still be infected.ΓÇ¥ The new error messages are described in detail in the
is still infected,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£this file is probably still infected,ΓÇ¥ or ΓÇ£this file may
Depending on the type of error that occurs, we now report that ΓÇ£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 ΓÇ£damagedΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£Error MessagesΓÇ¥
files are ΓÇ£damaged.ΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£unexpectedΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£unexpectedΓÇ¥ error messages. In
repair infected files, and if you forgot to add Disinfectant to GateKeeperΓÇÖs
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 ΓÇ£bundle bitΓÇ¥ 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 (ΓÇ£HFSΓÇ¥). 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 ΓÇ£bugΓÇ¥ in version 1.0ΓÇöit 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.ΓÇ¥ This bug has been fixed in version 1.1.
circumstances it was possible to get an alert saying ΓÇ£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 ΓÇ£damaged.ΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£out of memoryΓÇ¥ alert. Version 1.1 does a better job of
Some kinds of ΓÇ£damagedΓÇ¥ 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
ΓÇó Disinfectant Version 1.1. April 16, 1989.
There are several other minor changes and corrections in the document.
document.
virus-fighting programs in the ΓÇ£Other Virus ToolsΓÇ¥ section of the
We now mention, but do not review, the various commercial
ΓÇ£Special FeaturesΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£wake upΓÇ¥ 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 ΓÇ£wastedΓÇ¥ disk space in the
1.1ΓÇö 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 ΓÇ£compactsΓÇ¥ 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
ΓÇó Disinfectant Version 1.2. August 4, 1989.
============
Version History