Slashdot Mirror
Top Viruses, Worms and Malware in 2006
An anonymous reader writes "HNS is running an article with a list of those malicious codes which, although they may not have caused serious epidemics, stood out in one way or another. Some of the categories are: the biggest snooper, the most moralistic, the worst job applicant and the most tenacious. From the article: 'The most competitive. Once the Popuper spyware has installed itself on a computer, it runs a pirate version of a well-known antivirus application. Far from trying to do the user a favour, it is actually trying to eliminate any possible rival from the computer. It seems that the fight for supremacy has also reached the world of Internet threats.'"
That bit of malware is installed on users machines without their knowledge of what it really means.
It may monitor what you are up to, We don't really know yet.
It may pop a message onto your computer suggesting that you go to a certain website and pay money to some questionable organisation.
A new version is reputed to disable your computer if you do not submit to its blackmail...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
They say that Gatt.A can infect any platform like "omg noes Linux and Mac!" but according to http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encycloped ia/overview.aspx?IdVirus=122900&sind=0 the IDA (which it exploits) is present on multiple platforms, but there are other things about windows that made the virus function.
I don't know about everyone else, but this damages the credibility of the article for me.
How to infect a Unix or Linux machine:
Automatically through mail? Impossible to do without user interaction, since everything that comes down the pipe doesn't have the execute bits turned on. Anyone who writes an MUA that does that autmatically will be taken out back and hit with the clue bat.
Unless there's a bug in your libpng implementation, and your MUA automatically displays images.
Coming soon - pyrogyra