Ambulance (computer virus)

Ambulance

Alias| RedX
Type| Virus
Origin| Germany
Technical details
Platform| DOS
Size| 796 bytes

Ambulance or Ambulance Car is a computer virus that infected computers running a DOS operating system in June 1990. It was discovered in Germany.[1]

## Description

[edit]

Animation of the payload

Ambulance does not become memory resident. It infects only one .COM file in any given directory, but not the first one. Thus, there must be at least two .COM files in a directory for it to spread.

When an infected file is executed, an ASCII art ambulance can be seen moving across the screen, a siren starts to sound, and it displays an alert message such as: BOOM! It is not a deliberately destructive virus; it simply spreads itself around and shows off its payload once in a while.[2] In certain iterations of the virus, the ambulance will only appear once per boot-up.[3]

## Variants

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These are just some of many variants detected:

* Ambulance Car-B
* RedX-Any
* Ambulance.793
* Ambulance.793.A
* Ambulance.795
* Ambulance.796A[4]

## See also

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* Comparison of computer viruses

## References

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1. ^ "Ambulance Car Virus". 1996 Virus-Test-Center, University of Hamburg. Archived from the original on 10 June 2007. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
2. ^ "AMBULANCE.796A - Threat Encyclopedia". www.trendmicro.com. Retrieved 2021-01-10.
3. ^ "Ambulance Car Virus". agn-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de. Archived from the original on 2007-06-10. Retrieved 2021-01-12.
4. ^ "Virus.DOS.Ambulance.796.a". Virus List. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015. Retrieved 18 February 2013.

## External links

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* Ambulance by F-Secure.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20081007234124/http://www.codebreakers-journal.com/content/view/193/104/
* Ambulance Car Virus by Online VSUM.
* AMBULANCE CAR VIRUS by Probert Encyclopaedia.
* Ambulance virus removal - Antivirus by Turbo Cash.
* Virus.DOS.Ambulance.793.a by Secure List.