The Whale virus is a
computer virus
A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and Code injection, inserting its own Computer language, code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas ...
discovered on July 1, 1990. The file size, at 9,216
byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...
s, was for its time the largest virus ever discovered. It is known for using several advanced "stealth" methods.
Description
After the file becomes resident in the system memory below the
640K DOS boundary, system slow-down occurs as a result of the virus'
polymorphic code
In computing, polymorphic code is code that uses a polymorphic engine to mutate while keeping the original algorithm intact - that is, the ''code'' changes itself every time it runs, but the ''function'' of the code (its semantics) stays the sam ...
. Symptoms include
video flicker and output to screen appearing very slowly. Files may seem to "hang" even though they will eventually execute correctly.
It was reported that one infected program displayed the following message when run:
}
Shifting the letters of "~knzyvo}" left in the
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
table by 10 characters turns the string into "tadpoles".
See also
*
Computer virus
A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and Code injection, inserting its own Computer language, code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas ...
*
Comparison of computer viruses
Creating a unified list of computer viruses is challenging due to inconsistent naming conventions. To combat computer viruses and other malicious software, many security advisory organizations and anti-virus software developers compile and publis ...
References
External links
McAfee Virus DescriptionF-Secure Virus Description
DOS file viruses
Crime in Hamburg
Cybercrime in Germany
{{malware-stub