What is the stoned empire monkey virus?

I would like to know what exactly is the Stoned Empire Monkey Virus?

This question was answered on April 18, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

---

The Monkey virus was first discovered in Edmonton, Canada, in the year 1991 The virus spread quickly to USA, Australia and UK and is now one of the most common boot sector viruses

As the name indicates, Monkey is a distant relative of Stoned Its technical properties make it quite a remarkable virus, however the virus infects the Master Boot Records of hard disks and the DOS boot records of diskettes, just like Stoned Monkey spreads only through diskettes

Monkey does not let the original partition table remain in its proper place in the Master Boot Record, as Stoned does Instead it moves the whole Master Boot Record to the hard disk's third sector, and replaces it with its own code The hard disk is inaccessible after a diskette boot, since the operating system cannot find valid partition data in the Master Boot Record - attempts to use the hard disk result in the DOS error message "Invalid drive specification"

When the computer is booted from the hard disk, the virus is executed first, and the hard disk can thereafter be used normally The virus is not, therefore, easily noticeable, unless the computer is booted from a diskette

The fact that Monkey encrypts the Master Boot Record besides relocating it on the disk makes the virus still more difficult to remove The changes to the Master Boot Record cannot be detected while the virus is active, since it reroutes the BIOS-level disk calls through its own code Upon inspection, the hard disk seems to be in its original shape

About the author

Posted by olivia of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on April 18, 2003

Need Help with this Issue?

We help people with technology! It's what we do.
Contact or Schedule an Appointment with a location for help!