4.5- Form Follows Function
Figure 12: The Form virus, another boot infector, rose steadily in prevalence before reaching equilibrium.
The Form virus was first observed in an incident in 2Q90. It infects diskette boot sectors and system boot sectors of hard disks. When the system is booted from an infected diskette or hard disk, the virus becomes active in memory and infects essentially any diskette used in the system thereafter. Unlike the Brain virus, the Form virus remains on the hard disk and can spread if the system is booted from the hard disk subsequently. Unlike the Stoned virus, the Form virus is capable of infecting diskettes of any kind in any diskette drive, so it did not remain limited to one kind of diskette. On the 18th of any month, the Form virus will cause a slight clicking when keys are depressed on an infected system. This is often subtle enough to go unnoticed. The Form virus does not possess the limiting features that caused the Brain and Stoned viruses to have difficulty spreading in the early and middle 1990s. It has exhibited what we expect to be typical behavior for a virus that has found its way into the world. It took over a year before it started rising significantly in prevalence. It rose steadily during 1992 and 1993, becoming the most prevalent virus worldwide. By the end of 1994, it had reached a rough equilibrium at about the same level as other mature viruses such as Jerusalem or Stoned. In the absence of environmental change, we might expect the Form virus to remain about as prevalent as it is today.
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