LONDON (Feb 4, 1996 1:11 p.m. EST) -- Software saboteurs have
created the first computer virus specifically targeted at
Microsoft's Windows 95 program, British researchers said
Sunday.


   The virus can corrupt programs so that they no longer
function, and then spread to other users' machines, Paul
Ducklin, an analyst for the British software company Sophos,
told The Associated Press.

   "It is the first virus we've seen that is written specifically
for Windows 95 ," said Ducklin, whose company specializes in
writing programs that destroy viruses.

   "So, although it is not particularly well-written, Boza will
go down in history," Ducklin said.   Analysts have named the
virus Boza after a Bulgarian liquor "so powerful that just
looking at it will give you a headache," Ducklin said.
Fortunately for the estimated 10 million users of Windows 95,
the virus does not appear particularly contagious.

   "To infect someone else's machine, you would have to give them
an infected pr ogram, and they would have to run it," Alan
Solomon, chairman of the S and S International software firm,
told The Independent on Sunday newspaper.   "Most people don't
swap programs around like that," Solomon said.

   Ducklin said Boza is not yet "in the wild" -- computer talk
for a virus that is replicating itself on regular users'
personal computers.
   So far, it is circulating mainly among companies that make
anti-virus programs, Ducklin said. Software is available to
destroy it.

   Computer analysts do not know who made the virus, although
there is a clue in one of the messages that Boza occasionally
throws on computer screens: "VLAD Australia does it again with
the world's first Win95 virus," a reference to a well -known
group of virus makers.

   Microsoft released Windows 95 in August without an anti-virus
program. The Bellevue, Wash.-based company early on had to fight
a perception that one version of Windows 95 came with a virus
already on the diskette.

   Microsoft 95 differs from the company's previous operating
systems because it can run programs whose instructions are 32
bits long, rather than 16 bits, allowing greater flexibility
through the increased memory. Boza is written specifically to
corrupt 32-bit programs.

   The virus attaches itself to existing programs. It makes
copies of itself while they run, and the copies are then
attached to other programs.