Comment I wrote the (a?) cleaner to get rid of this trojan (Score 5, Interesting) 67
Back in 1989 I had been writing x86 asm code for 7 years and looked into/disassembled virus code since the first ones turned up.
I was told that an AIDS/HIV researcher here in Norway had gotten this extortion notice, asking for help to get rid of it.
I don't remember all the details now, but afair the floppy disk contained code to replace the boot sector with a program which would display the ransom note and count down to 10 (?) before destroying all files.
My cleaner was sent out as a write-protected bootable floppy which would look for the trojan boot code, and if found, replace it with the original.
I did not hear about anyone who paid and got their research back after it had been overwritten/encrypted.
Terje