Virus:Boot/Ripper infects floppy disk boot records and hard disk Master Boot Records (MBRs). The virus is encrypted with a variable key, which is quite rare among boot sector viruses.
F-PROT for DOS v3.0, 3.01, 3.02 and 3.03 have a bug which causes the disinfection of Ripper to fail. This might cause a machine to become unbootable. Do not use these versions of F-PROT to disinfect this virus; contact Support instead.
A False Positive is when a file is incorrectly detected as harmful, usually because its code or behavior resembles known harmful programs. A False Positive will usually be fixed in a subsequent database update without any action needed on your part. If you wish, you may also:
Check for the latest database updates
First check if your F-Secure security program is using the latest updates, then try scanning the file again.
Submit a sample
After checking, if you still believe the file is incorrectly detected, you can submit a sample of it for re-analysis.
Note: If the file was moved to quarantine, you need to collect the file from quarantine before you can submit it.
Exclude a file from further scanning
If you are certain that the file is safe and want to continue using it, you can exclude it from further scanning by the F-Secure security product.
Note: You need administrative rights to change the settings.
Ripper contains two encrypted strings:
Ripper was found in November 1993 from Norway. However, it is believed to be of Bulgarian origin.
The virus will only infect hard drives when an attempt to boot from an infected diskette is made. Once the virus has infected the hard drive, all non-protected floppies used in the machine will be infected.
Ripper is two sectors long, and it stores the original boot sector to the last sector of the root directory. It also reserves one sector before that for its own code.
Ripper has stealth capabilities; the virus code cannot be seen in boot records while the virus is active in memory.
Ripper contains a destructive activation routine. It corrupts disk writes by random - approximately one disk write in 1000 is corrupted. The virus will swap two words in the write buffer, causing slow and in some cases difficult-to-notice corruption on the hard disk.