On Saturday 08 April 2006 01:00, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote:
" Cross-platform Virus Infects Linux And Windows
By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News
A Russian security company announced Friday that it had found a cross-over virus that can infect PCs running either the open-source Linux or Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Dubbed "Linux.Bi.a" and "Win32.Bi.a," the split-personality malware doesn't do any damage. Instead, said Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs in an online briefing, it's a proof-of-concept to prove that a cross-platform virus is possible.
"However, our experience shows that once proof-of-concept code is released, virus writers are usually quick to take the code, and adapt it for their own use," wrote a Kaspersky analyst in the briefing."
This is important information: "According to Kaspersky's research the Linux.Bi.a/Win32.Bi.a virus can infect either ELF binaries (Linux) or files with the ".exe" extension (Windows)." Returning to what others have posted concerning the easy infestation of Windows and the relative difficulty of doing the same in Linux -- How many executable files on a Linux system can a regular user overwrite? Nothing important. There aren't enough stupid system admins in the real world who would click on/run an unknown executable to enable this kind of virus to spread. As the article says, it is proof-of-concept. For Linux systems it will stay that way.