ANSI Bomb

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What Does ANSI Bomb Mean?

An ANSI Bomb is a type of Trojan virus that reprograms certain keys (including function keys), making them display color and unwanted graphics by use of character sequencing. ANSI bombs connect themselves to the ANSI.SYS driver, which is usually associated with a text file or mail message. By initiating destructive commands, escape sequences redefine keys in this bomb process.

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Techopedia Explains ANSI Bomb

ANSI bombs have been around since 1996. Key commands, like “Enter”, also may malfunction, causing a system to crash. These types of Trojan viruses are not as harmful as other viruses because they typically do not launch to third-party systems.

An ANSI bomb can execute within ANSI systems, but the number of programs that require ANSI has reduced drastically. Current Windows versions no longer utilize ANSI terminal emulations.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.