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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Petty who wrote (11422)	1/11/1999 11:55:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22640

Well David (OT), here's the last post on my hard drive problems. Four computers in my house were infected with the Form.a virus, as well as about 20 floppies. Apparently it is only transferred by floppy so the hundreds of reports I have sent out were fine. Here's what it does... On hard disks, the virus copies the original boot sector to the last sector of the physical disk. The second sector of the virus is copied to the second last sector of the physical disk. This sector contains the text (which is not displayed): The FORM-Virus sends greetings to everyone who's reading this text. Form doesn't destroy data! Don't panic! Fuckings go to Corinne. On floppy disks, the virus creates 1Kb in fake bad sectors, which is used to store the original boot sector and its own code. These bad sectors are reported by CHKDSK. On the 18th of each month, the PC is supposed to click when a key is pressed. This will not happen if any program, loaded after the virus goes memory resident, traps keyboard input (for example, KEYB). I also had about 10 floppies from the old days with the Empire-Monkey.B virus... The virus infects the partition sector of the hard disk when booted from an infected floppy disk. The virus then infects floppy disks accessed where the virus is memory resident. This virus has no payload, and contains the encrypted string Monkey. The virus encrypts the original boot sector (floppy disks) or the partition sector (hard disks) and does NOT store a copy of the original boot or partition sector anywhere on the disk (on hard disks, an encrypted copy of the partition sector is stored on cylinder 0, head 0, sector 3). When the PC is booted from the hard disk, the virus goes memory resident and decrypts the partition sector, so that the PC boots normally. If an infected PC is booted clean, the partition table remains encrypted and DOS is unable to access the hard disk (an attempt to access the hard disk by typing C: produces the message, Invalid drive specification). For this reason, FDISK/MBR should not be used to remove this virus; if FDISK/MBR is used the hard disk will become inaccessible (the PC will fail to boot from the hard disk). Variants Empire.Monkey.B contains some pieces of code rearranged, but is otherwise almost identical. Ironically the last virus was on two old Western Digital and Seagate low level disk repair floppies I had, both of which were used in conjunction with FDISK. I remember last time I used them a couple years ago...I was tearing my hair out and finally pitched the drives as my kids sat looking at me doubting I knew what I was doing. This virus looks like it came from some of the old shareware diskettes I picked up at local computer trades shows. Well...end of a nasty saga. I'm saving a few copies of each so you don't want to get on my bad side <g>. To plug Solomons WinGuard, it automatically detects the virus in any floppy I put in the drive and removes it. I'm not even able to look at the boot sectors when it's loaded cause a window pops up stating it's been removed before any disk reading utility finishes the first read. Good stuff...I recommend it. And, FWIW, I never would have got through this with CPQ's help. They were leading me around in circles. Even if replaced the hard drive which was their next step, I would have been right back to square one on the first kid report I printed out (they give 'em to me on a floppy). Now, if it would just stop snowing and my fast ethernet card would arrive for my blazing internet access. I'm a happy man! We must have a better day coming tomorrow. sf

To: David Petty who wrote (11422)	1/12/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: Bob Howarth	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 22640

If 70% of assets of UBB is government debt, and default occurs on this debt, then book gets reduced by 70%! Does anyone know what the breakdown is for these government loans? If it is only to the Federal government, great. What I don't understand. If New York State owed US Feds 1 billion dollars and defaulted, it would be a meaningless event for US gov but New York State would be in big trouble. Did Brazil Feds borrow from outside country to loan money to states? Also, if states have no money and Feds simply keep taxes and don't distribute them to states, where do states get the money to pay state employees? Won't they have to restructure? Things look bleak in Brazil. Place hasn't changed in 100 years. Still run by a bunch of losers.