The Quox virus is a reasonably simple diskette and Master Boot Record infector. It is only able to infect a hard disk when you try to boot the machine from an infected diskette. At this time Quox infects the Main Boot Record, and after that it will go resident to high DOS memory during every boot-up from the hard disk.
Based on the settings of your F-Secure security product, it will either move the file to the quarantine where it cannot spread or cause harm, or remove it.
A False Positive is when a file is incorrectly detected as harmful, usually because its code or behavior resembles known harmful programs. A False Positive will usually be fixed in a subsequent database update without any action needed on your part. If you wish, you may also:
Check for the latest database updates
First check if your F-Secure security program is using the latest updates, then try scanning the file again.
Submit a sample
After checking, if you still believe the file is incorrectly detected, you can submit a sample of it for re-analysis.
Note: If the file was moved to quarantine, you need to collect the file from quarantine before you can submit it.
Exclude a file from further scanning
If you are certain that the file is safe and want to continue using it, you can exclude it from further scanning by the F-Secure security product.
Note: You need administrative rights to change the settings.
Once Quox gets resident to memory, it will infect practicly all non-writeprotected diskettes used in the machine. Quox-virus is also a stealth virus - if you try to examine an infected boot record, it will show you the original clean one instead.
Quox-virus has no particular payload and no text strings. It does not activate in any way, but it will corrupt some diskettes seriously. The damage might not be visible as long as the virus is resident in memory because of the stealth. When infected diskettes are used in a clean machine, they will typically be unreadable and, due a bug in DOS, may even crash the machine.
Virus was found in Thailand in July of 1992. Virus was named to be "Quox" at the IBM High Integrity Labs because "there was no obvious good name, and we didn't have very many viruses starting in 'Q'", David Chess from IBM commented.