Win32/Linux Cross-Platform Virus

An Anonymous Coward writes "Symantec reports on the first virus to infect both ELF and PE binaries on Linux and Win32. "The first Win32/Linux cross-infector, {Win32,Linux}/Peelf, uses two separate routines to carry out the infection on PE and ELF files. This variant of Simile shares a substantial amount of code between the two infection functions, such as the polymorphic/metamorphic engines, the only platform-specific parts being the directory traversal code and the API usage.""

Comments

One more reason...

[forged]

...not to be logged in as root. At least the typical Linux user can limit the damage this way.

Re:Do antivirus companies write viruses? No.

[janda]

1) The quote is "a bear to code up". It says nothing about complexity, difficulty, the bills I need to pay tomorrow, or the fact that there is a tiny man in boots, jeans, a light brown shirt, and an orange hat sitting on the shelf of my desk.

2) I can't even spell it, much less pronounce it, but I heave heard of them, and can usually understand what most of them do after some study.

3) For any non-trivial program 'foo', there is point of diminishing returns, 'bar', where further optimization is not a cost-saving measure. Can I have my MBA now?