Viruses appear to attack handheld PCs

Symantec has said it has found a virus that can spread on calculator computers, and although there is no damage to the device, it displays unpleasant text on the computer screen. .

The virus was named TIOS.Tiagra by Symantec, spread via USB cable, and displayed the words "t89.GARRA" on the handheld PC screen. The virus can now be spread on Texas Instruments TI89 devices and other compatible computers.

Texas Instruments engineers say they cannot find a mechanism to eliminate TIOS.Tiagra even though it is a harmless virus. The virus works through the mechanism of attaching code to any compatible file and then searches for a certain script to replace and forward the code of the virus. If the script is not found, the virus will still be there but do not conduct device control.

The virus only runs on ASM extension files, and so if you want to replicate, the virus must run to check if the computer has an ASM file.

ASM is the file name extension of the assembly language source program. Once successfully infected, the virus will wipe the computer screen and display the message line: t89.GARRA. The computer will still function normally when the infection process ends.

Symantec only ranks the virus at a low level and indicates that the virus will only spread when users share the device via a USB cable.