5.3. Temporary Memory-Resident VirusesA slightly more exotic type of computer virus is not always resident in the computer's memory. Instead, the virus remains in memory for a short period of time or until a particular event occurs. Such an event might be triggered after a certain number of successful infections. For example, the Bulgarian virus, Anthrax, uses this method. Anthrax infects the MBR and installs itself in memory during the booting of the infected PC. The virus remains in memory until it successfully infects one EXE file. At that point, the virus removes itself from memory4 and becomes a direct-action virus that will only infect another file when an infected EXE file is executed. ![]() |