F-Secure Virus Descriptions : Torn

The Red-Zar virus was renamed to Torn in February 1997.

Red-Zar viruses were received from Denmark in July 1995. They are simple non-resident direct action infector of COM files.

The viruses are encrypted. The 461 byte variant contains this text: "Red-Zar / TorNado" and the 467 byte variant this: "EN-666/TorNado".

Both of the known variants activate on certain dates, overwriting parts of the hard drive.

[Analysis: Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure]