OT: Virii

From: Glenatacme_at_aol.com <(Glenatacme_at_aol.com)>
Date: Tue Jul 17 22:35:32 2001

OT, yes (maybe some virii are >10 years old??) but related to programming in
general. Plus, if no one on this list knows the answer, then there probably
*isn't* an answer ;>)

I received a virus in an e-mail attachment a few minutes ago. The sender is
a wholesale supplier I'm acquainted with. NAV spotted the
"W32.Magistr.corrupt" virus, could not repair the infected item, and asked
for permission to delete the item, which I granted.

I looked this virus up in the list of 50K+ virii that NAV currently claims to
cover. No information was available, except that this virus is rare, it
infects .exe files, and it is zero bytes in length.

Now, I've cranked out a couple of boatloads of code over the last 19 years,
and the smallest useful program I ever wrote was 3 bytes in length. It's
easy enough to create a zero byte file, but as far as I can tell such a file
can't *do* anything.

How can I write a zero-byte program? How does NAV identify this virus if
it's zero bytes in length? What real threat to my PC is an e-mail-propagated
virus of length zero?

WTF???

TIA,

Glen
0/0
Received on Tue Jul 17 2001 - 22:35:32 BST