Cascade (computer virus)
Fall foliage is the name of a computer virus that was first discovered in 1987 at the University of Konstanz. It was in the original version of exactly 1704 bytes in size and only infested. COM files. The virus dropped from the screen to the bottom line of letters at irregular intervals, the computer was thus more or less unusable. You had the computer restart, thus data were lost. Autumn Leaves was one of the last viruses that have been programmed without direct malicious code; it was still regarded as a joke program, although there are already wreaked considerable damage. Autumn leaves spread via infected floppy disks, which made it relatively easy fight. The machine was started on the hard disk, the virus was not active. Therefore, the damage was also limited.
Special
The virus was relatively uncommon in the Soviet bloc, which meant that speculation to assume that it was a piece of malicious code that has been prevalent in the Cold War from the East. A likely Bulgarian programmer with the pseudonym Dark Avenger programmed immediately after autumn leaves numerous also memory-resident viruses, but in contrast to the autumn leaves infested also. EXE files. Dark Avenger was regarded as the most prominent and most imaginative viruses producer.
Fall foliage is now considered first memory-resident virus as well as the first virus that could encrypt itself. Thus, it established the second generation of computer viruses. The encryption code is very short and has often been used in the past for teaching purposes:
Xor [ si ], si xor [ si ], sp inc si dec sp aliases
The virus autumn foliage was also known under the following names:
- Cascade
- Colani ( slightly different appearance, the same malicious code )
- 1701
- 1704
- Blackjack