Precautionary Information

There are reports of a possible "CIH virus" in the Adrenaline Vault's premature version of the main Secret Ops package. We are still working on absolute confirmation on everything. In the mean time the CIC has asked Edward Pang to compose this precautionary information statement on CIH viruses. There's nothing to worry about however, it does not appear that any other locations with the Secret Ops package may be infected.

The Win95.CIH virus recently came into the spotlight after April 26 when it worked to delete the CMOS settings on infected computers, as well as removing the first sector of the hard drives it infected (rendering the computers unable to boot up, as all the startup data was lost with the CMOS).

Most new computers are immune to the CMOS overwriting portion of this relatively rare virus, as modern motherboards have a physical switch that must be depressed in order to rewrite CMOS information, though the deletion of the first sector of the hard drive (containing bootup information) will hamper infected users. It is a memory-resident virus that infects every program that is run within the 32-bit environment of Windows, but does not operate while in DOS or Win3.1 modes, due to the 16 bit environment. Check http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/data/cih.html and http://www.drsolomons.com/vircen/valerts/win32cih.html for more information on the virus itself, and scanners to detect and delete the virus can be found at www.avp.com (AntiVirus Toolkit Pro was the first program to detect it in action), www.symantec.com/avcenter (follow the KILL CIH link), or www.drsolomons.com.

Note that the file must be run before it can infect Windows, and that it does not operate in DOS mode. If you suspect your computer is infected, perform the following instructions:

1: Download a command-line scanner like NAVC from www.symantec.com/avcenter

2: Put in a clean, write-protected boot disk into your disk drive and reboot the computer. Do this before the 26: it deletes files at this date.

3: Run the scanner, and scan all the files on your computer. It is only found within EXE files, however.

4: Reboot your computer. Download AntiVirus Toolkit Pro from www.avp.com and install. This scanner has proven effective in detecting CIH in all its incarnations.

Note: The SiN demo had this same problem. It set off CIH warnings. But it didnt have it in reality. McAfee says the Probability of having the CiH virus as Minimal.

The CIC thanks Edward and Hadrian for researching for this situation, however we hope that there is no need for these instructions. Again, we have apparently uninfected copies of the Secret Ops package in our Secret Ops Mirror page and there is nothing to worry about.