Rumor has it that Tony Duell may have mentioned these words:
>Rumor has it that Glenatacme_at_aol.com may have mentioned these words:
>> 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?
>
>
>My guess (never having seen this virus, and certainly never having
>written a virus) is that the code is not 0 bytes long (for the obvious
>reason), but that it overwrites some bytes in the files it infects rather
>than addting itself to the file, so the file remains the same size.
>
>So the _change_ in file size is 0 bytes.
Either that, or it's a typo on NAV's website...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Wed Jul 18 2001 - 17:07:41 BST