INIT 1984

INIT 1984 is an early computer virus that is among the first known to cause significant damage to data on computers running classic Mac OS.

Description
INIT 1984 was first discovered on March 13, 1992. It functions by infecting extension (INIT) files and is triggered when the computer is booted on a in 1991 or later. The virus relies on the INIT startup mechanism present in System 4.1 and later. Symantec assessed the risk of INIT 1984 as "Very Low" as it is spread through the sharing of extensions, which is less common than the sharing of applications or documents.

Disinfectant 2.7 or later will detect and remove this virus, though the Disinfectant INIT must be named to start with a special character such as a "space" character (and placed in the System Folder instead of the Extensions folder in System 7 or later) to load before any infected extension can.

Known issues
If the date of the computer is a Friday the 13th in 1991 or later, an infected INIT will:
 * Change the filenames, filetypes, and creator code attributes of folders and files to random characters.
 * Creation and modification dates are changed to January 1, 1904.
 * Files that cannot be renamed are deleted.
 * Approximately 2% of files are deleted.
 * Older Macs with 64 KB ROMs (such as the Macintosh 128K and 512K) will crash.