From: aryeh@mcafee.com (McAfee Associates)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Comments OS2SCAN (Was: Re: OS2-stuff) (OS/2)
Date: 19 Dec 92 00:21:30 GMT

Hello Alfred Jilka,

You write:
[...when looking at OS2SCAN...]
>1) You state in the documentation, that there are several switches, which do
>not exist in the OS2 versions. But if you invoke "OS2SCAN /? " you will see
>all switches available under DOS. You should update these pages of help.

I thought these were fixed in the production version of the program, in case
not, it will be fixed in the next release.

>2) After scanning is finished, the program asks constantly if I want more
>help. "OS2SCAN C: D:" does not ask for help, does it?

Does this occur if you run OS2SCAN with the /NOPAUSE switch?  If not, then
OS2SCAN is simply prompting you because it has displayed 24 lines of text
on the screen and does not want to erase anything with a new page unless you
tell it to.

>3) Watching the filenames that pop up for short, I got the impression, that
>OS2SCAN does not scan *.DLL, *.DRV, *.ADD files. You can correct this either
>with /A or /E switch. But these do belong to the standard executables and it
>should not be necessary to think about these. Probably there are more ex-
>tensions to be included.

Right now, there are no OS/2-specific viruses.  The main advantage of 
OS2SCAN (et al) is to be able to scan OS/2 HPFS systems for DOS viruses.
Support for these will be added in a subsequent release.

>4) Did you think of the built-in undelete-function ? I hope the /D switch
>works correct. You need to overwrite first, and then delete the file to en-
>sure it does not survive as a deleted shadow.

That's how it works in VIRUSCAN--I believe that this is not exactly 
possible under OS/2, but something like it is done to prevent virus-infected 
files from being undeleted.  If OS2SCAN can not delete a file, it will 
display a message warning that it can not overwrite-and-delete the file.

>5) A minor problem, but still annoying for OS2ers: VALIDATE should become a
>genuine OS2 program. For shure it does not need a fancy outfit, but why do I
>have to start a DOS session, just see the results of VALIDATE ? If I in-
>voke VALIDATE from an OS2-window a DOS window is created and closed immediatel
y
>after it finished. I know, I could change the settings, but why do I have to
>do this for a single check ?

An OS/2 specific version of VALIDATE, OS2VAL.EXE, is available with the
programs.  Did you download a beta-test version or production version of 
OS2SCAN?  Beta versions came with DOS VALIDATE (VALIDATE.COM), production
versions come bundled with the OS2VAL.EXE program.

>6) Another nice thing I miss is a background-scanner, that checks all in-
>coming files, be they from floppy or modem or whatever. Probably you can't
>check what the floppy is reading, but you can do a check on all newly
>appeared files on HD. I admit, that I still have no idea, how to check files
>executed from floppy. But at least all or specified drives could be scanned
>every n miutes or on request.

We are looking into the feasibility of doing this now.  Unlike DOS, there
are only a couple of books available on writing device drivers for OS/2,
currently.

>7) Maybe a kind of *.INI file could help to maintain the settings like drives
>and directories to scan and a userdefineable list of extensions and other
>often used options instead of writing them directly into OS2SCAN. I know of
>the parameterfiles you can create, but wouldn't look an interactively created
>setup (like the one you have in WSCAN) much nicer ?

OS2SCAN creates an OS2SCAN.INI file when run with the /SAVE switch that
contains all that.  That was not available in the beta version.

>
>8) SCAN for DOS rel.9.0 V99 (most recent on Dec. 12th, 1992) does not do any-
>thing within a OS2 DOS-box. Neither windowed nor fullscreen. Although I read
>the readme.1st and *.DOC, where I found a suggestion to use the /MAINT switch
>and/or the /AD option, it either told me it can not access my HPFS-drives
>(no options or /AD) or that D: is incompatible with /MAINT (/AD /MAINT) or no
>errors were reported for scanning drive C: (scan c: /maint), but nothing was
>scanned (no disk-access) and the program returned almost immediately.

We're looking into this now.  Should be fixed in the next release.

>9) In Virlist I found a passage for the fam*-viruses where no information
>is provided about their behaviour. Is this correct ? And if so, why ?
>I thought, that Mutation Engine is a .OBJ-file to be linked with viral coding.
>So DAME itself would not be a virus to be listed this way in VIRLIST.TXT.
>It would be better to introduce a new column for viruses using MtE.
[...deleted...

I'll have a technician from tech support contact you in email about this.

Regards

Aryeh Goretsky
Technical Support
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