# High stakes viral math test

By Murray Bourne, 22 Mar 2006

If you are math-phobic, this would be a scary computer virus. The article is from f-secure.com: "Infected CD-ROM Disks In Circulation".

Two separate cases, in which a file originating from a CD-ROM disk had caused a virus infection, were discovered in October and November. In both cases, the involved disks were globally distributed shareware collections.

The PS-MPC.Math-test virus was found from the CD-ROM disk "Software Vault, Collection 2". [...] The virus stays resident in memory and infects practically all executed COM and EXE programs. It activates every day between 9 and 10 a.m., displays some simple summing problems and demands that the user solve them. If the user doesn't get the answer right, the virus won't execute the requested program.

I hate viruses...

Be the first to comment below.

### Comment Preview

HTML: You can use simple tags like <b>, <a href="...">, etc.

To enter math, you can can either:

1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)
(See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
2. Use simple LaTeX in the following format. Surround your math with $$ and $$.
$$\int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}}$$
(This is standard simple LaTeX.)

NOTE: You can mix both types of math entry in your comment.