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Windows Vista Tool Targeted By Virus Writers

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the infectious-diseases dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Five proof-of-concept viruses that target Monad, the next version of Vista's command prompt, have been published on the web. Monad is a command line interface and scripting language that is similar to Unix shells such as bash, but is based on object-oriented programming and the .Net framework. The viruses' only action is to infect other shell scripts on the host's operating system. They would cause little harm in the wild, but would be relatively easy to modify using the information from the article, said Mikko Hyppönen, the director of antivirus research at F-Secure."

4 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. This just in! by TummyX · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Monad can be used to write scripts that do stuff!

  2. Not a vulnerability by LinSuxShyt · · Score: 0, Redundant

    CURSE: Whoever mods me down with less than 3 due to their other OS bios or anti MS sentiment will never be happy, his/her kids will never love him/her and he will end up wasting his/her life. How can a script which doesn't exploit any vulnerability and requires you to execute it manually on the computer is a threat? Isn't it same as bash and KSH viruses on Linux? Think if you execute a bash script in Linux and it goes on and put itself in all your bash scripts, would you call it a virus? This is actually nothing, it simply prepends/appends or put itself in the middle of existing MSH scripts. It is equivalent to, if you run a binary on your machine, it can attach itself to all the binaries on your machine. On top of that, MSH by default only let digitally signed scripts to execute hence once infected scripts won't execute. This is not really a threat at all. Pissed on Anti-MS dogs...

  3. Beta release by jurt1235 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So a beta release of your software goes out to about 500.000 beta testers & developers, and and up in the hands of concept virus writers within about a week after releasing it?
    So your group of testers is not 100% trustworthy and to write a new concept virus only takes 1 week (including the "learning curve" on the new shell environment?).

    It is going to be a bright and shiny future.

    --

    My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
  4. Slightly OT: What Will it Ship With? by SenFo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Originally, Microsoft told us that we could expect WinFS and a new command prompt to be released with the next version of Windows. Now, according to the fine article, "Microsoft hinted a couple of months ago that [Monad] may not be ready for initial versions of the Vista client or server".

    So exactly what will Windows Vista ship with besides a boat load of crap that takes functionality away from me?

    --
    My lame blog.