About the virus/trojan horse

Concerning the "virus" - the trojan horse (1999)

If you came to this page because of this certain trojan horse, please read this before mailing me.

You probably found the name of my web site in the "virus" file. Let me explain how that comes:

Some time ago, a person unknown to me sent me an email, asking for a program component that could exchange icons in an exe file. He knew that I already programmed that from a released program of mine.
After some hesitation, and especially without knowledge of his program, I sent him a compiled component for his use. Some time later, he sent me his program - it was a generator for trojan horses. I haven't even tried it, things like that don't interest me.
However, I included (hard-coded) the name of my web site in my component - because I didn't want that he hides my programming efforts and so that I would get the credits I deserved.
But when I saw what kind of program he wrote, I emailed him immediately (being quite angry) and he assured me to have removed all reference to my web site from his released version two days after first release. I forbid that he ever uses my component again.
Still, people began to write me angry emails. I'm sorry for these people, you, who have problems with this trojan horse. At first I replied with the email address of him. But then he sent me an antivirus which you can download below.

Now you know how the name of my web site appears in the "virus". I feel very misused - I just helped someone by sending him a component of mine - and as thanks I get angry mails of people accusing me to have written a "virus" / trojan horse.

Therfore I ask all of you who are in possesion of the trojan horse generator to not use it. It causes a lot of trouble to those people whose computer gets infected.

As people may still not believe that I'm not its programmer, here a few reasons:

• At the moment I start a serious career as an independent programmer. Programmers live from their reputation and from what they have programmed. So I would be pretty dumb to program a virus.
• As you can see from my released programs, I am specialized on music programs. I have never done any Internet programming in Delphi.
• I'm not only working on the programs that are downloadable from my various web-sites, I also work for a company in Nice, France. And besides my studies of computer science and even some time for other hobbies there just wouldn't be the time to program a full-blown virus generator like this one.
• And in case I would really be the programmer of this trojan horse, which seems to be quite "ingenious" (quote from an email I received), why would I be so stupid to include my web site in it ?

But why don't I just make available the email address of the real programmer ?

As it is already very annoying for me to have to be in relation with a trojan horse, it would be certainly double severe for him. He is quite young and I just don't want to destroy his reputation - which might get very important for him one day. In my eyes, he has done a mistake by writing this trojan horse, but he is a good programmer and also writes serious programs - downloadable on the internet.

So, please, don't write me emails about this trojan horse. I have neither any specific knowledge of how it works nor do I know what it really does.

Download the antivirus :

antivirus.zip (153KB)

Here are some excerpts from emails that I received that may help you to understand a bit better what the trojan horse does or how it operates :

- WAR -

- Mohand -

- H. -

- Mohand -