OT: Virii

From: Alan Pearson <Alan.Pearson_at_cramersystems.com>
Date: Thu Jul 19 03:32:20 2001

>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?
Sounds like it patches an existing file. One method of checking for a virus
is to scan files for a tell-tale set of bytes, I would guess that's how NAV
found this one. I just did a Google search for "Magistr" - a whole load of
sites all say the same thing - a month after infection the virus kicks in
and nobbles hard disk sectors, then has a go at the BIOS too. It doesn't
sound like it's that easy to fix :-(

Moral 1: never open an attachment from anyone unless you've confirmed in
advance what it is. It's not enough to say "never open attachments from
people you don't know" because most of these mail virii are spread by using
people's Outlook Address Books... if you're unlucky enough to have a mate
who's got you in his address book and s/he opens a virus attachment you're
going to get the virus delivered from a friendly source...

I used to get some stick from the lads when we go out for beers for never
opening the joke GIFs they mail me - one day I wrote a bit of VBA in a
Word document and sent it to them - all it did was list the contents of C:\
into the document in the same style as the DIR command, then pop up a dialog
saying "Do you want to delete these files?" with only a "Yes" button and the
"X" box system button. Either way once the dialog was closed it then put up
another dialog saying "Thanks for playing" at the same time as deleting each
line in the document (not the actual files, of course!), one a second. The
utter panic this caused amongst 4 supposedly experienced programmers was a
revelation - 4 "what the **** was that?" phonecalls later was enough to
convince me that
a) never trust your mates emails, it might not be from them
b) don't believe your eyes - Word isn't completely WYSIWYG, thankfully :-)

Moral 2: use alternatives to Microsoft, they've lost the plot - as if I
needed to say that on this list :-)

Moral 3: just because it's technically possible doesn't mean it's
particularly desirable. What possible justification can they have for
including a programming language in a word processor? What did Chuck Thacker
call it? Biggerism?

On topic: once I've fixed the PERQ's monitor I'll be hacking clones of elm
and lynx together. I'd like to see anyone infect that machine :-)

-- al
Received on Thu Jul 19 2001 - 03:32:20 BST