McAfee Unveils Anti-Virus Breakthrough; Bootshield First Anti-Virus Software to Prevent Boot Virus Infections; Ordinary Anti-Virus Software Unable to Prevent Boot Viruses Which Account for Over 70% of all Virus Infections

Business Wire, Dec 19, 1995

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 1995--McAfee (Nasdaq: MCAF) today unveiled BootShield, an anti-virus software package capable of preventing boot virus infections. The software represents a true breakthrough in the struggle against boot virus infections, which cause immeasurable data loss each year for thousands of computer users. Until now, traditional anti-virus software packages have been unable to prevent boot virus infections. Although boot viruses account for only 6% of the total population of approximately 7,000 known computer viruses, they cause over 70% of all reported virus infections.

"Anti-virus researchers have struggled for years to develop a preventative solution for the boot virus problem," said Tom Spence, anti-virus product development manager at McAfee. "The challenge we faced is that boot viruses infect PCs during the system start-up process and before the operating system has loaded its anti-virus software defenses. In order to circumvent the infection process of boot viruses, we needed to use the virus writers' own techniques against them when we created BootShield."

How Boot Viruses Work

Boot viruses hide within the boot sector of a hard drive or floppy disk. Since the boot sector contains instructions used by the operating system to start (boot) the computer, it is the first area accessed by the computer at start-up time. If the boot sector contains a boot virus, the virus will become activated at system start-up.

Most boot virus infections occur when users accidentally start their computer while a floppy disk is still inserted in the PC. DOS, thinking that the floppy contains its start-up information, accesses the boot sector of the floppy and becomes infected. Once the system becomes infected, the virus will infect subsequent floppies that are inserted in the floppy drive.

How BootShield Works

BootShield masks the boot sector from potential viruses. When BootShield is installed on a computer, it first scans the entire system to ensure that it is virus-free. Once the system is certified clean, BootShield copies itself into the boot sector and relocates the system's boot sector information to a hidden and secure area of the hard drive. If a virus attempts to modify the boot sector, BootShield will halt system operation and display a dialogue box providing several administrator-defined instructions, including the option to delete the virus. BootShield will also provide real-time monitoring of the master boot record, partition tables, and system interrupt vectors.

For further data protection, BootShield ships with an optional disaster recovery feature called ImageStor. ImageStor maintains a real-time mirrored backup of the user's entire hard drive. ImageStor is based upon technology acquired earlier this year from the former Mountain Technology. -0-