Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 CD & VME Family

Viruses and worms
1

I’m using the latest Avast! with all updates on Win 98.

I have a legit copy of Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 on 2 CDs. After I installed the encyclopedias, I ran an Avast scan (more out of curiosity). Scanned to check archived files etc… (so thorough). Avast detected the following 2 “viruses”. I’m wondering what they are. (I’m guessing malware?)

VME family

C:\Program Files\Britannica 2003\Deluxe EditionCD\data\eb\gist-5.jar\52738\0.gz

C:\Program Files\Britannica 2003\Deluxe EditionCD\data\eb\articles-1.jar\119575\47421.gz

2

VME=Visible Mutation Engine
These are harmless nonmemory resident parasitic viruses that search for .COM files of current directory and write themselves to the beginning of the file. They do not manifest themselves.

Looks to me like you have a false positive since you have a legitimate version of the enceclopedy. I suggest you pack those two file in a pasword protected zip and send them to virus@avast.com
Don’t forget to mention the pw in your mail :wink:

3

Thanks Eddy, will do. :smiley:

4

Unfortunately I won’t be able to forward these 2 files to AVAST, as they are HUGE (60+MB, and I’m on dial-up). Anyway, I suspect Eddy is correct, and that it’s a false positive.

5

Perhaps you can zip them and put them on a cd to send them on another system with a faster connection. Just a thought…

6

C:\Program Files\Britannica 2003\Deluxe EditionCD\data\eb\gist-5.jar\52738\0.gz
C:\Program Files\Britannica 2003\Deluxe EditionCD\data\eb\articles-1.jar\119575\47421.gz

look at file name, JAR archive is renamed ZIP archive, so you may open it in WinZip/WinRar/Total Commander/… and extract 0.gz file in \52738 folder and send it to virus@avast.com with subject something like “false alarm” because it seems it is. Thanks !

7

Done!

Thanks pk!