Summary

This virus was first reported in Israel, but a text string inside it says:

    SOFTWARE COPIES PROHIBITED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW..............
    Box 1055 Tuscambia ALABAMA USA.

This message will also appear on the screen in a box on the screen one hour after an infected program is run.

Like a few other viruses this one cannot be removed from memory by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del. It will simply fake a "reboot" and remain in RAM.

Unlike most other resident viruses, it will not automatically infect every new program executed. When a program is run, Alabama will instead search for some other program to infect - probably so the program being executed will get the blame. It will only be infected if no uninfected file is found in the current directory.

Every Friday the virus will do something odd. It searches for a file to infect as described above, and executes it instead of the file the user was planning to execute. A bit weird ...!

One variant of this virus, Alabama-B is also known. It has been distributed in the form of a modified SDIR.COM file, but normally Alabama will not infect .COM files.